How many teaspoons of sugar in stoneground bread?

Stoneground flour is milled between stones rather than steel rollers. The process tends to leave a coarser, more uneven flour, with the bran and germ ground in rather than sifted out. Dr Unwin’s bread chart lists a wholemeal loaf made from this kind of flour. It has the lowest glycaemic load of the seven breads on the chart, at 7, and the second-lowest glycaemic index, at 59, after the wholemeal pita.

Particle size is the usual explanation in the GI literature for differences like this. In a coarse flour, digestive enzymes reach the starch inside each fragment more slowly than in a fine one. The word “wholemeal” on its own does not promise a coarse grind: many wholemeal loaves are made from finely milled whole wheat, and the chart’s ordinary brown loaf is listed at GI 74.

A GI of 59 falls in the band usually labelled medium, which runs from 56 to 69. The load and the teaspoon figure are printed on the chart for a 30g slice, so no step on this page has been estimated.

“Stoneground” is used loosely on packaging, and some loaves sold under the name mix stoneground flour with roller-milled flour. The GI of a loaf depends on its recipe and baking as well as its flour, so a loaf with the same description from another bakery may not give the same result.

The white, brown and other breads from the same chart each have a page under breads, and the calculator lists all seven alongside two roti from the South Asian foods chart.