Low Carb Sunflower Seed Loaf

After putting off posting a low carb bread loaf for so long, I’ve decided that this recipe below is good enough to share. I’ve been playing around with ingredient combinations for months, sometimes even forgetting to take note of what went in and this one is by far the best – to me at least. One thing I’ve noted and had problems with is the rising. At times, the bread will rise beautifully and at times, not much. That’s when the end result will taste gummy. Sometimes the gluten will get stringy and sometimes, it mixes in nicely. A tad more water may make the difference. I’m now so satisfied with the outcome of this bread I don’t experiment anymore. The problems with stringy gluten strands in the bread have disappeared after so much practice. Whatever you do, don’t use the bread machine, just put all the dry ingredients in a bowl and stir in the warm liquid gently with a spoon. Then use your hands to knead lightly into shape. Don’t overknead.

I now throw  in a handful of sunflower seeds and 1 tsp chia seeds everytime I make the bread. I’ve also put in some millet – but only because I was trying to get rid of the leftover millet in my pantry. Millet is  not exactly a low carbohydrate item. Other suggestions are sesame seeds and pumpkin seeds. You might have other ideas.

Low Carb Sunflower Seed Loaf

100 gr flaxseed meal

100gr finely ground almonds

30 gr soy flour

10 gr wheat bran

200 gr gluten

1 packet yeast (9 gr)

1 tsp salt

1/2 cup sunflower seeds

Optional: chia seeds, sesame seeds or pumpkin seeds

250 ml lukewarm buttermilk

150 ml warm water

Heat your oven to about 50 degrees C for 10 min and turn off the heat.

Put all the dry ingredients in a bowl and stir to mix. Add the buttermilk and water and stir gently. If it looks like the liquid is not enough, add more water bit by bit till you are able to form a nice ball.

You can either put the ball on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or put it into a loaf pan lined with parchment paper like illustrated below.

I’ve also tried baking with a silicon loaf pan. I usually advocate baking low carb items with silicon wherever possible due to the ‘non-conventional’ ingredients which tend to stick heavily – except in this case. Although the bread literally fell out of the pan without any sticking after baking, the shape was something else. During the rising process, because the dough was heavy, it pressed against the sides of the wobbly silicon pan and expanded sideways. So although there was nothing wrong with the end product, it looked out of shape. If you don’t mind, then do use silicon because it is a blessing.

Cover the pan with some tented aluminium foil and put it into the warm oven (switched off!) and leave the bread to rise for 50 min.

Once the bread has risen, take off the foil, close the oven door and turn on the oven to 180 degrees C. Bake the loaf for 55 min. Take out and let cool.

Tips:
* You can also slice the whole loaf and freeze it, taking out the amount you need the night before. I usually freeze half a loaf and once the first half is eaten up, I will defrost the next half overnight in the fridge.
* I would not recommend leaving this bread outside on the kitchen counter for too many days. It depends on the temperature. I left half a fresh loaf out in June when the day temperature was about 25 degrees C and it was covered in mold within 2 days. I must admit it was quite warm in my kitchen and I stupidly recycled a plastic bag which I had used for another loaf of bread. Now I’ve learnt. This bread is moist and this makes it a wonderful breeding ground for mold. However, if properly handled (like in the previous tip), you can enjoy this for up to 2 weeks.

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Nutritional Information – per slice if cut into 22 slices, without the optional seeds

Total calories – 115.2 kcal; fat – 6.8 gr ; carbohydrates – 2.6 gr of which dietary fibre is 2.3 gr ; protein – 10.5 gr

Total carbs for the whole loaf is 57.2 gr.

Print this recipe – Low Carb Sunflower Seed Loaf

The low carb bakery

I wanted to try and create some flax seed and/or soy flour scones today since I had a bit of time. Then I thought, instead of starting from scratch, I would see what I could find floating around the web and try to improve on it. Why waste time and ingredients? I googled for flaxseed scones and found a recipe for flaxseed drop scones on the Low Carb Diets forum by anitamay. It didn’t call for many ingredients so I said, I would detour a little from my ‘English’ scones and do these first.

Boy, these turned out to be the PERFECT low carb pikelets. Ok, first let’s clarify all this confusing terminology. Pikelets are little pancakes and a little thicker than the usual American ones. In the UK, pikelets are referred to as drop scones. They are not to be confused with the thick scones that the English eat for tea with butter, jam and clotted cream.

I took the recipe, made a few changes and couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the finished pikelets. Look for yourself.They look like regular pikelets, only darker and taste pretty good too. I can imagine you could use these as ‘muffins’ to make Egg McMuffins too!

Soy Flaxseed Pikelets

I’ll bet if I added a 1/2 tsp of baking soda, I’ll get those holes on the back of the pikelet but I’ll have to wait for the next round to test that out.

With the recipe below, I got 5 pieces about 8cm in diameter (3 inches).  Now, I can usually eat 3 pikelets for breakfast but let’s not be greedy here. We don’t want the Chinese restaurant effect. After doing a nutrition calculation, I discovered that each pikelet has about 2.6gr carbs. So if you eat two, you’ve already got 5.2gr and if you are on Dr B’s diet, well, you’ll just have to find a topping that won’t get you way over 6gr!

The recipe…

Low Carb Soy Flaxseed Pikelets (5 pieces)

2 Tbsp ground flaxseed meal

4 Tbsp soy flour

1 medium egg beaten

3 Tbsp soy milk

pinch salt

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp lemon zest

1 tsp oil

Mix everything together into a smooth batter. Lightly coat a frying pan with oil and heat it up, then turn down heat to medium.  Drop batter into pan to make small rounds. I can get three into my pan. When the batter has slightly set, flip it and cook the other side. Simple as that.

Prepare the night before, prepare the morning itself or make ahead and freeze. Mmmm… Now you just have to decide what to eat it with!

Note: don’t turn the heat up too high. Soy flour gets brown faster so the outside could get burnt before the inside gets cooked.

You can play around with the flavouring. Instead of lemon zest, you could use orange zest or vanilla.

Nutrition Facts: Calories per piece – 47.4 kcal; Total Fat – 2.8 g, Cholesterol – 37.4mg; Sodium – 141.2 mg; Total Carbs – 2.6 g; Protein – 3.5 g

Print this recipe: Low Carb Soy Flaxseed Pikelets

Well, now that I’ve got that flaxseed meal and soy flour sitting on the kitchen counter, do you think I’m going to stop here? Of course, not. Get on with those scones or else…

So what should I do next. Well, the pikelets gave me an idea – mix flaxseed meal and soy flour. So I took my cream scone recipe (I’ve got many scone recipes) and substituted the plain flour with flaxseed meal and soy flour. Made another small change and voila! Another success! These scones don’t rise as much as when plain flour is used. However, they are still light and absolutely perfect! Fresh out of the oven, the scones have a light crisp crust. I immediately enjoyed one with cream cheese! Heavenly!

Low Carb Flaxseed Soy Scones

Low Carb Flaxseed Soy Scones (8 pieces)

1 cup (90gr) flaxseed meal

1 cup (70 gr) soy flour

2 tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

1/3 cup (80gr) butter, chilled, cut into pieces

2 tsp lemon or orange zest

1 large egg, beaten

¼ cup (60ml)  cream

Glaze: some buttermilk, milk, egg white or beaten egg

Line a baking tray with parchment paper. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F or 190 degrees C.

Mix the two flours, baking powder and salt in a mixing bowl. Rub in the butter till mixture resembles bread crumbs. Stir in zest. Add the egg and cream and stir with a spoon till just combined. You should be able to form a soft ball with your hands. If the batter is too watery, add a bit more flaxseed. If too dry, add a tad more cream.

Divide the mixture into 8 portions, form each into a ball, press down slightly and place on baking tray. Brush with desired glaze.

Bake for 20 min. or slightly longer if centre is still not done.

Nutrition Facts: Calories – 188.7 kcal, Total Fat – 16.8 gr; Cholesterol – 58.4 mg, Sodium – 261.4 mg; Total Carbohydrate – 3.7 gr, Protein – 6.8 gr

Print this recipe : Low Carb Flaxseed Soy Scones

PS. I’ll let you in on a secret – I forgot to substitute the sugar in the recipe for splenda, leaving it out completely and you know what – you don’t need any sweetener!