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Keto-friendly bread
Hey guys, I'm here with my lovely wife Karen, and we are going to make the most incredible recipe for bread you've been waiting for. This is the ultimate bread, and there's no flour, no gluten, no bad stuff. So how do you do this, Karen?
It's so easy. You're going to love it.
So it's 1 cup of almond flour in my Santa cup measuring cups. It is one cup of arrowroot flour. You use a little arrowroot here. Arrowroot is a low glycemic flour, and it's made from a root, so in small amounts it's okay. Arrowroot is why they call it root, that's exactly what it is.
This doesn't come out as quickly, and then 1/3 cup of coconut flour. These combined give it a really neat texture. Most of the natural breads out there kind of taste terrible; they're kind of like a sponge cake, like bark.
Yeah. Then we're going to do 1 teaspoon of salt, and that's it for the dry ingredients. Mix it up very, very well. It smells really good already.
How to make keto bread
Then you go on to the yeast, which is also very simple. Now we're going to do the yeast portion. We're going to pour in a quarter cup of warm water, between 105 and 110 degrees. The temperature really is important. If it's too cold or too hot, the yeast will not do its thing.
We're going to add two teaspoons of maple syrup. That's the food for the yeast, so it's not going to be a problem. Yeast is a living organism, and it produces carbon dioxide.
Now we're going to take two teaspoons of instant dry yeast. This equals one packet. One packet is usually two teaspoons if you're using the smaller packages.
Is this delicate? Could you actually mess this up?
You can mess it up, and I have messed it up. I used water that was way too hot. What's supposed to happen now is the yeast is going to eat the maple syrup, and it's going to push out little gases, and that foams up, and that's actually what makes your bread rise.
So the water is 105 to 110, like I said. Then the yeast eats the maple syrup and pushes out gases, and that's exactly what's supposed to happen. You keep it there and wait ten minutes.
If you stand and look at it, you'll see little bubbles coming up. It's like little yeast fireworks. It is alive. That's the really cool thing. It is totally alive. The yeast is eating the maple syrup and excreting little gases, and that's what helps your bread rise.
The key is the temperature, but also your yeast. If your yeast isn't any good anymore, you can have the perfect temperature water and it won't do that.
So after about 10 minutes, your yeast is going to be beautiful and foamy. It's done. It's eating all that maple syrup.
Now we're going to add two tablespoons of psyllium and one-and-a-half tablespoons of ground chia. Psyllium is kind of like a fiber. We get whole chia, and then we have one little coffee grinder that we use just for spices, seeds, and things like that.
You let it sit for two or three minutes, and it gets really gelatinous and thick, and then you whisk it. We have to wait.
So this has been sitting for just two or three minutes. It got gelatinous and luscious. Now we're going to stir it all in and make sure it's all whisked in. Alright, good. Now we put this into our dry ingredients and mix it up. You are going to see this become something amazing.
This is one of those things people have been trying to figure out for years. You can't really find a good bread recipe without wheat. I was so surprised how well this turned out. I did find this online. I'm not sure exactly what we changed, but I appreciate people who have done all the research to figure out the chia and the psyllium, because that's amazing.
Now it's going to look gloopy like this, and you literally need it for just one minute.
I think what happens is that without gluten, you don't have the glue. Gluten is like glue. So the combination of chia seed and the fiber tends to act like glue, which is perfect, because we can do that all day long.
Yep. You can take this out of the bowl, but I'm just leaving it in the bowl.
Can you make a pizza crust with that? I can. I used to do that.
Okay, so now we have this beautiful ball of dough. I'm going to put it in a slightly smaller bowl, rinse my hands really quick, and I have a damp towel. I'm going to put it over my bread. Excuse me, Dr. Berg. Now I'm going to put it in my warm space, which is not a cold space.
For an hour, we're going to let it rise. After you've had your yeast rising in a warm place for an hour, you take it out. My oven is off, but it's the warmest place, so I just put the bowl in there. Take it out, and the damp cloth is no longer down. That's what it looks like. It did rise, and it should double. It's beautiful dough.
Now what you're going to do is cut it in half. You can make two, or you can leave it as one big one, but then you make it into a round loaf. What is a boule anyway? A boule is just round bread. I had to look it up myself.
Okay, now to get it golden brown, here's the trick: an egg wash. It's just an egg yolk with a teaspoon of water. You wash your little boule with it, and that makes it nice and brown and crispy on the outside, like a sourdough. Another thing to give it a little touch is a crisscross pattern with a knife. It gives it a little something.
The original recipe said to use a stone, but I don't have a stone. What I do is put it on a hot pan. I use parchment. Normally I would just carry the loaves over to the oven, but for this, I put it on hot parchment, on the pan, and that's it. It goes into the oven. Unfortunately our oven light isn't working right now, so you'll see that when it comes out.
Tasting the low carb bread
Okay, it's time to take the bread out of the oven. Let's take a look. Wow. We've made a few loaves. This is why it didn't turn into one loaf in the oven. Come look. That's serious bread. We can't touch it until it's cool inside, because it'll be chewy.
Nope. So check the texture. This is a great way to eat butter. It is a great way to eat butter. Mmm. It toasts beautifully. It's better than bread. Better than well, it is bread.