Anti cancer baking

The healthiest sourdough ever baked? Maybe!

Let’s start with credit where it’s due. A great baker named Brian Towell has posted a number of his baking experiments over the last few years too which really inspired me. One that really grabbed me was the idea of liquidizing a can of tomatoes & using the resulting liquid instead of water in a bake. The result is a delicate blush on the colour (see for yourself below) and extra savoury depth to the flavour. Absolutely gorgeous, especially with soft boiled or poached eggs for breakfast.

Second, the disclaimer: I’m not in any way a medic or nutrition expert. I’m a patient determined to do everything I can, so I use sites like this to find ingredients that may have anti-cancer properties and then I experiment in cooking and baking with them. That’s all I have here, I hope that someone finds it helpful. For anyone in treatment, please do check everything with your medical team. I am not that. If you want an easier way to check and research for yourself, I find Perplexity to be incredibly helpful in providing summaries and also guiding me to great source material.

I got into a mix of flours & seeds here too. Loads of nutritional detail and also some thoughts on baking for mental health follow below the good bit. I’ll save the story telling till later, I’m not trying to game time on site metrics here.

The Recipe
400g canned tomatoes, liquidized.
200g active sourdough starter.
525g mixed flour (roughly even mix of Einkorn, Emmer, Oat Flour & Strong White).
25g ground seeds (rough mix Black Sesame & Flax).

If you don’t do Sourdough ask ChatGPT to adjust for dried yeast, bread maker devices etc. For beginners, the Perfect Loaf is a site I often refer to for processes or techniques.

The Science
It’s the compound in the tomatoes that really matters to me here. They contain a decent level of lycopene which has great anti-cancer properties (high lycopene consumption drops prostate cancer risk by up to 40% and has a positive impact on plenty of others types of cancer too. Better still, the lycopene levels in canned tomatoes are even higher than in fresh and they’re potentially more climate friendly too! More on all that here.

With this in mind, I baked a few tomato loaves, and then wondered how I might go further. In this weekend’s bake, I’ve pushed to new levels! I’ve been reading more on the anti-cancer properties of seeds recently. Flax seeds caught my attention first, so I now have a tub of ground flax on the counter, ready to add to sauces, salad dressings - and now breads! Rich in Lignans and Omega-3, both of which are gaining recognition for cancer fighting properties. I also added Black Sesame seeds as these contain Sesamin and Sesamol. Recent studies indicate these may inhibit tumour growth and induce apoptosis in cancer cells and even inhibit angiogenesis (crucial for tumour growth and metastasis). I also then got creative with my flour mix - not just a strong white flour, but also mixed in some Einkorn & Emmer ancient grains. These are typically richer in fibre, higher in antioxidants and lower on glycaemic index that more modern grains. I also add in some oat flour for the bio diversity and the anti-cholesterol wins!

Back Story
For those that got this far and want to know more. No more food ideas below, just some history and a bit of mental health intrigue.

My partner got a sourdough starter going in lockdown, that realised she’d need to feed it daily. It was at this point, I adopted it! I’d never been a baker before and wanted to explore. More than this though, it actually proved brilliant for my mental health while in lockdown - and indeed since.

Kicking off a bake in the morning means I have a structure for leaving my desk for 5-10 mins every couple of hours to do the next step. Then means stretching the legs, getting fresh water, taking a screen break but also doing a manual activity. There’s plenty of research that stepping away from a problem for a moment often brings more creative solutions to the fore. There’s also research emerging than such a change in action can change both Alpha, Beta and Gamma brain waves.

Certainly, it seems to leave me feeling sharper and refreshed after just a few mins with a lump of dough as I head back to my desk - so I’ve maintained that baking action. I also now used sourdough discard (unfed starter that’s past it’s peak) in a variety of others ways. I might write more on that later if anyone asks.