Keto Bread Update

A month ago I made a flourless bread based on someone else’s recipe. It was a good substitute for traditional bread even though it is imperfect. The one flaw that I noticed after making this bread a second or third time was the sponginess it had. It was strange and discomforting, something food shouldn’t be. I decided to alter the ingredient amounts and give another bake.

I removed the Xanthan Gum from the recipe and reduced the Vital Wheat Gluten by a 1/4 C while adding an additional 1/4 C of oat fiber.

• 1 C water (warm water)
• 2 eggs (lightly beaten)
• 3/4 C oat fiber
• 2/3 C flaxseed meal
• 1 C Vital Wheat Gluten
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp xanthan gum
• 1 tsp honey
• 2 Tbs butter, salted (soften or melted – preferred)
• 1 Tbs active dry yeast

The results were much better and of course I didn’t bother to take any photographs. You have to forgive me as I hadn’t eaten in 22 to 23 hours. I had a nice Genoa salami sandwich with Havarti cheese and nothing else. This sandwich brings back memories of being a child and going to a hunting camp with my father and grandfather. We would stop at this little market in the middle of nowhere and make these sandwiches on the final leg of our journey. That was our dinner on a Friday evening.

If you find the sponginess to be a bit much then try this altered recipe. I did not notice any sponginess to the bread. If I remember I may eat a slice without anything but whoever does that? If you continue with the older recipe then toasting it reduces the sponginess or the sponginess doesn’t bother you.

If you missed the link to the recipe in the top paragraph here it is again – Keto Bread.

Bread Round 2

After travelling all over the county and the neighboring counties, I had to buy my final ingredient and wait a few days. When you own four pounds of a powdery ingredient that you normally would use for pizza the recognition of the fact that you have a decade’s worth of an ingredient hits you. And I had to wait for my four pounds of vital wheat gluten to arrive as no one in my area sells this anymore.

Wonderful – light and fluffy

It is not that making bread is difficult. My wife has made bread many times and it is always successful. This bread is different. This is a bread from scratch using strange ingredients on a bread machine that I am unfamiliar with. It is trial and error for me. The videos and directions I’ve watched have not worked so far, so now this is my discovery to make.

What am I making? Flourless bread. Why have I decided to make this? First, for health reasons. Second, this is an opportunity to make something and use the bread machine my parents gave to my wife and me. Hey Mom and Dad looking down upon me, I am using this machine. A third reason was to see if this stuff tastes good. Now to the recipe.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 C water (warm water)
• 2 eggs (lightly beaten)
• 1/2 C oat fiber
• 2/3 C flaxseed meal
• 1 1/4 C Vital Wheat Gluten
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp xanthan gum
• 1 tsp honey
• 2 Tbs butter, salted (soften or melted – preferred)
• 1 Tbs active dry yeast

DIRECTIONS

In a bowl add the oat fiber, flaxseed, vital wheat gluten, salt, and xanthan gum, and blend together.

In the bread machine container, add the water and then the beaten eggs. Slowly add the dry ingredients. Be careful as this can create a lot of dust. Now pour the butter evenly on the outside and against the inside wall of the container. Make a slight depression in the center of the container without digging to the water. Add your yeast in this depression followed by the honey.

You’re ready to work the bread machine. Follow the directions that come with the bread machine you use.

Looks like bread

The image above does say one thing and that is that I am no baker. However, the texture, taste, and the visual appearance says it is bread. This tastes very much like wheat bread. I do notice the pockets in the bread tend to be smaller on the edges and the bottom of the bread but that was an issue when I was eating it. With deli meat, it was perfect. I made some buttered toast and that was good. So, yes you can toast it. I am planning on making French toast with this in the future. In fact, I have some plans for this recipe as I have enough ingredients to become a small bakery. As my wife enjoyed this, I will be making this more often. Now I have to find a place to store the machine in our kitchen as I don’t want to go to the basement and dig the machine out each time I want bread.

Now some notes about this recipe.

1. I omitted any type of sweetener as I simply didn’t want it. It wasn’t necessary, too.

2. The honey is for the yeast as yeast needs sugar to feed. I am not sure if all of the honey is consumed, but there isn’t much in there if you’re concerned about carbohydrates.

3. There are some carbohydrates within this recipe, so depending on your carb limit you may not have a concern.

4. You need to figure out what setting is best on the bread machine you use. The bread machine below is, naturally, the one I used. My original test used the #5 setting and it created a cannonball. I am certain I could knock down any fortification with it. The bread ended up being under cooked. This round I selected #2 and it worked great. I didn’t get the rise that I had hoped for, but as you can see it was a success. Another option is to allow the machine to make the dough and you bake it in your oven. For this method, you take the dough out and put it in a bread pan and allow for another rise. People usually put it in their microwave with boiling hot water for a short time to allow for it to rise before they bake it in their oven. I could try that in the future.

If you’re on a keto diet I recommend this. The numbers I found are as follows: 2 g of carbohydrates per slice or 35 g per loaf, 105 calories per slice, 5 g per slice, and you should be able to get 18 slices out of a loaf. Now I am pulling these numbers from different sites, so I can’t confirm the validity of these numbers. The original person that everyone references is Diedre. If you have no carbs then I guess you can use the other bread recipes out there.

For me, I plan on trying to expand this recipe and do different things as I have plenty of ingredients. This will include my adding different ingredients to this recipe to see what I get. Who knows, I may need to buy a cannon.

Keto Bread

This recipe has been taken from another site (FitAmbitiousBlonde). Yes, I do view other people’s blogs and recipes from time to time. This one caught my attention because my wife and me (mostly her) want to cut back on our grains, so we’ve been looking for substitutes. She loves her bread while I find it only a necessity when I want a sandwich. So if you only want the recipe, go to the link above. If you’re interested in my experience, keep on reading.

Ingredients

• 3 Tbs coconut flour
• 2 eggs (she uses only egg whites)
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 Tbs melted butter [I used unsalted butter]
• 2 tsp olive oil

1. Pour all ingredients in a microwave safe bowl that is 4″ wide at the bottom.
2. Whisk all ingredients together
3. Remove from microwave and let sit until cool.
4. Cut in half horizontally

I was making scrambled eggs, too.

There you have it, a simple recipe. For me, the true test is when I eat it. As it looks like a English muffin, I will try it with jelly and honey. I ended up forgetting about the honey. A ramekin was used as it was close to an English muffin size.

Looks like hummus

Appearances can be deceiving as this is very delicate even when toasted. The bread was quite flimsy when I removed it from the ramekin, but that could be due it still be warm. As you can see, it toasted beautifully and as you put the bread to your mouth, you get the slight aroma of coconut. The texture is more of a cornbread than an English muffin or standard bread. In fact, its dryness reminded my wife and me of a southern biscuit.

This is the finished look. Comes out of ramekin easily

Looks like an English muffin

The taste, besides being dry, was biscuit like with the hint of coconut. Butter works with this as does apple butter. The elderberry jelly I used was okay, but I think the texture and dryness biased me as I don’t put jams or jelly on cornbread and really don’t care for southern biscuits. Yep, I’m not a southerner at heart. I did forget to apply honey, though I imagine it would go well with this bread or what I would rather call a biscuit.

Did we like it? My wife was hesitant as she tried to categorize it to what she is familiar with. In the end, she did like it and will eat this again. I think the coconut flavor is a major player as she loves coconut. What about me? Yes, I do like it even though it is more of a biscuit. Next time, I am going to try whole eggs instead of only whites.

So, thank you “FitAmbitiousBlonde” for the recipe. Again, you can visit her site for the recipe.