I'm just a simple Christian with a Bible...
all of this controversy over Paul is kinda beyond me, although I do know that Peter did say that there were some things Paul had written that were difficult to understand, and that some folks would twist, as they did other scriptures, to their own destruction.
As for the bread and wine...
It looks like bread.
It smells like bread.
It tastes like bread.
Conclusion: It is bread.
It looks like wine.
It smells like wine.
It tastes like wine.
Conclusion: It is wine.
It's a whole lot of arguing over nothing.
Saint Paul
"Is not the cup of blessing a sharing in the blood of Christ? Is not the bread which we break a sharing in the body of Christ?" (1 Cor 10:16)
"a man should examine himself first . . . anyone who eats the bread or drinks the cup in an unworthy manner shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord" (1 Cor. 11:28-29)
hardly sounds like someone teaching the Eucharist is merely symbolism and that is just two examples from Saint Paul. Which is also the reason why someone wanting to refute the Eucharist would want to seek to discredit Saint Paul's teachings as depicted in his NT letters.
That such teachings of Saint Paul opposes the other Apostle's teachings and so Jesus', is difficult to support when one starts looking at writings from the early Church outside the NT. Like Saint Ignatious, who is believed to have been tight with both Saint John and Saint Peter. Ignatius of Antioch - Letter to the Romans
"I have no delight in corruptible food, nor in the pleasures of this life. I desire the bread of God, the heavenly bread, the bread of life, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became afterwards of the seed of David and Abraham; and I desire the drink of God, namely His blood, which is incorruptible love and eternal life." end of Chap 7
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0107.htm
Ignatius of Antioch - Letter to the Smyrnæans
"Let no man deceive himself. Both the things which are in heaven, and the glorious angels, and rulers, both visible and invisible, if they believe not in the blood of Christ, shall, in consequence, incur condemnation. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it. Matthew 19:12 Let not [high] place puff any one up: for that which is worth all is faith and love, to which nothing is to be preferred. But consider those who are of a different opinion with respect to the grace of Christ which has come unto us, how opposed they are to the will of God. They have no regard for love; no care for the widow, or the orphan, or the oppressed; of the bond, or of the free; of the hungry, or of the thirsty.
They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again. Those, therefore, who speak against this gift of God, incur death in the midst of their disputes. But it were better for them to treat it with respect, that they also might rise again." Chap 6 and 7 continues
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0109.htm
So my point is you cannot have people who learned from the Apostles writing about a clear practice representing an ESTABLISHED belief with ZERO objections recorded from the Apostles and say that makes a lot of sense. At best you would have to claim (as some do) a wide spread corruption occurs early in the 1st century and somehow no record of what would have to be strong objection from the Apostles survived and no record survives of what had to have been a rebellion against the Apostles to have been so widely established in such a short time. People were willing to and did die for these beliefs and also died staunching defending all of their beliefs. Defending each part of a whole body of teachings is one reason for most the NT letters.
So it is not like objections would have been a trivial or quite matter in those days. Which given the records we do have of people objecting to hosts of other Apostolic/Church teachings, the absence of any record seems most unlikely, especially odd too that we have no mention of what would have to have been great rebellion within the Church against the Apostles.