When we say homemade bread everyone thinks it is a hard recipe to pull off.
But trust me after you make your first loaf you will be in love with homemade baking and it is very easy to do nothing complicated.
This week I was preparing for the fasting period next week and I wanted to have a healthy bread that I can grab a piece of with some jam whenever I am a little bit hungry.
I wanted something egg-free, milk-free, oil-free, healthy and tasty!
By now, everyone who is a regular reader of my recipes and articles on my blog can notice that I can’t keep any recipe as it is; I have to twist it and modify it in my own way. I just can’t resist that urge of replacing and substituting stuff.
And most of the time it works perfectly for me. I wish you could see my face when I modify a recipe and replace the ingredients with clean healthy stuff and it works with no one even able to tell the difference in the recipe! I feel so proud of myself that I manage to cheat some clean food in my family favorite dishes. It is my kind of pranks but at least I am doing them a favor! 😛
For the bread, I tried many bread recipes before some of them worked like the homemade gluten-free bread
And some turn out to be so colorful and delicious like the “sponge fully bread” and some of them did not make it to the finish line! 😛
So yes in bread, it is a challenge to substitute ingredients and still have successful bread with the right texture and taste. But no worries I tried it before you and it works so sure it will work for you! Many attempts failed but many worked too and this one is one of the top successful bread baking stories I had till now!
In addition to be Vegan healthy bread, with no dairy, egg or oil what’s so ever we should point out a very important fact about this bread.
Let us go back to our good fat vs. bad fat battle:
The good fats are those unsaturated fat that include polyunsaturated fats and monounsaturated fats that when eaten in moderation and used to replace saturated fats help lower cholesterol levels and reduce your risk of heart disease. The famous omega-3 fatty acid is a polyunsaturated fat. Now on the bad guys. There are two types of bad fats that should avoid the saturated fat and Trans fatty acids. Saturated fats are found in animal products (meat, poultry skin, high-fat dairy and eggs). The Trans fatty acids that usually the artificial kind that we should worry about. The artificial Trans-fat that occurs when liquid oils are hardened into hydrogenated fats. They are used extensively in frying, baked goods, cookies, icings, crackers, packaged snack foods and many other processed foods. These fats are the most dangerous fats of all! It is Artificial after all! Even the smallest amounts of these fats can increase the risk for heart diseases by increasing the LDL (bad cholesterol) and decreasing HDL (good cholesterol).
The best way to keep on top of the fats in your diet is to become label reader. On the nutrition facts panel, you will find all the information you need to make healthful choices. Look for foods that are low in total fat and well as in saturated and Tran fats.
Speaking about labels… usually store brought bread; bread sticks crackers… hide a good amount of saturated fats and Trans Fat. For that doing your own homemade bread is always the better choices because you will avoid adding any processed ingredients. You will know what you are eating and feeding your family. It is saturated fat-free bread with only 1 g polyunsaturated fat per slice!
In this bread, you can add any kind of seeds, nuts and aromas you like, experiment with your favorite super food.
So don’t hesitate to try this homemade bread and enjoy every bite of it knowing that you made the better choice for your body and health.
Homemade Dutch oven bread:
Ingredients:
Yield 16 pieces approx.
Wet ingredients:
- 2 ¼ tsp. instant yeast
- 2 cup warm water
Dry ingredients:
- 4 cup whole wheat flour
- 1 tsp. salt
- 2 ¼ tsp. dry instant yeast
Optional:
- 2 Tbsp. sunflower seeds
- 2 Tbsp. chia seeds
- 4 Tbsp. flax seeds
- 4 Tbsp. oat flax
- 2 Tbsp. Rye Grain
Instructions:
- Combine warm water and yeast. Set aside allow to proof (approx. 10 minutes)
- In a large bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients. *
- Create small well in the middle.
- Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir with a wooden spoon until just combined.
- If the dough is to dry add some water. If it is too sticky add some flour till it come together.
- Cover and Allow to rice until it double size (approx. 1hour and half to 2 hours) in a dark, dry , warm area of your kitchen (microwave or not heated oven would be great !)
- Uncover and give it few pokes, fold it few times and cover again for another extra 1 hour and half.
- After the time is finish and the dough is raised, preheat oven on 200 ˚
- And heat the oven pot inside the oven for 45 minutes.
- While the pot in oven is heating, remove dough and grease it with some olive oil and cover again till the pot is heated.
- Arrange dough in a circular shape like the pot you have, place it inside with some seeds for garnish on the top. (Watch out for the pot it will be very hot!)
- Close the pot and put it back in the oven and bake on 200 ˚C for 1 hour.
- Remove the cover the last 15 minutes.
- Let it sit for 10 minutes before cutting the bread.*
- Enjoy!
Nutritional information:
Serving Size: 1 slice • Calories: 130 • Fat: 3 g • Carbs: 24 g • Fiber: 4 g • Protein: 5 g
Notes:
*I prefer cutting as much as I need from the bread and store the other part as one piece in an airtight storage container in the fridge. This bread can live up to 3 weeks in the fridge.
*the optional seeds and grains I used in this recipe as mentioned, I mix them all together and put ¾ of it with the dry ingredients in the baking and left ¼ part to garnish the top of the loaf before baking. Any kind of dry adding (seeds, flakes, herbs…) you want to put in this recipe should be done in the dry ingredients phase at first.
