Protein bread: chickpea, beans and pumpkin seed flour along with some sunflower seeds! Risen with yeast, sugar free, oil free, all nice and healthy, packed with protein and fibres and baked to your delight! Dip it in soup. Slice it in a sandwich. Nibble it as a snack!
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I didn’t think I would bake a protein bread exactly. I was trying to do something meaningful with a broccoli head I had bought an hour before. And it seems like that broccoli heads try their best to outsmart my dear head because I’m not so much into them, really, but always trying to put them to some good use. Meaning, spice them to pieces with all kinds of stuff and outsmart their primary taste which, to be honest, is not something I would bring along on a deserted island.
So I thought, why not dip something in that green plate? Why not bake something? And I went to my floury stash… OK, this sounded weird, hahaha, at least in Croatian! No, I don’t have a stash of “white”, if you thought so. I have a stash of leftover flours, period. You know. A cup of rye flour, few tablespoons of 00 type or something as equally unusable per se, but in combinations. Oh, my!
And that’s all there is to it. A spoon of this, spoon of that, some yeast, water, and that’s it.
If you also find yourself opting for randomly throwing leftover flour into your mixing bowl, be sure to remember: if baking with yeast, you need something that will rise up with this yeast. In my case, that was whole wheat flour. You can also use plain or spelt flour, which will rise nicely. Other flours like buckwheat, corn or rye will make your bread denser and won’t rise as much. So think of that.
The next thing to think about it yeast. How much yeast do you need? Well, depending on how much yeast reactive flour you have. For 500 grams of plain, whole wheat or spelt flour, you will need 1 tbsp (7 grams) of instant yeast or 20 grams of fresh yeast. In this bread, I have 300 g whole wheat flour but I’ve added 7 g of instant yeast because I wanted it to be done a bit sooner.
And the last thing: watch that amount of flour that is not so/or at all reactive to yeast does not go up to more than half of the mixture of flours, or you’ll get yourself a brick. Or maybe you want a brick, but then, that’s another bread. From what I’ve found, the results are the best when using up to one third of yeast non-reactive flour within the complete amount of flour used.
In this bread, yeast reactive fellow is whole wheat bread and other flours are just added for taste. And protein, of course 🙂
So here goes the recipe. I hope you’ll love it as much as we did. This bread is:
*packed with protein and fibres.
*simple to make
*on the denser side but still elastic and soft
*full of flavours: chickpea, beans and pumpkin seed flour
*no extra kneading or proofing needed
*no special baking skills needed
Playing with bread is always fun! Especially if you don’t know will happen! But whatever happens, you should never take it seriously and fuss over it. Many people freak over baking bread. I’m not saying everyone should make their own bread. Yes, it’s a great satisfaction to have your house all filled with freshly baked bread scents, but doing other things is too. And please, do not play with bread when your mother in law or guests are coming! Hahaha! You’ll hate me!
Seriously now. I learned to bake bread myself. My mother sucks at it. I’m sorry, mom, but it’s so. She is great at other things that I suck at. My Grannie was too busy in her garden for bread making. So she was buying it. And that’s perfectly OK. And I was crazy and idle enough to stick myself into that sticky floury bowl.
And you know what’s most important: YOU SHOULDN’T BE AFRAID OF IT. Flour is generally cheap, and so is yeast. So the worst thing that can happen is what? That you throw it away? So what! Just don’t freak out over it and it’ll all be fine. And other, as equaly important thing is to FOLLOW THE RECIPE TO A T. And there should not be any surprises.
Here is my BAKERY section, so feel free to browse!
This is really not some artisan no-knead hole night proofing sourdough or thousand times laminated French croissants.
THIS IS THROW IT ALL IN ONE BOWL AND STIRR BREAD.
Protein bread: chickpea, beans and pumpkin flour along with some sunflower seeds! Risen with yeast, sugar free, oil free, all nice and healthy, packed with protein and baked to your delight! Dip it in soup. Slice it in a sandwich. Nibble it as a snack!
- 2 cups /250 ml water or plant milk
- 1 tbsp /7g instant yeast or 20 g fresh yeast
- 2 cups /250 - 300 g whole wheat flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 3 tbsp pumpkin seed flour
- 2 tbsp bean flour I had black bean flour
- 2 tbsp chickpea flour
- 2 tbsp ground flax seeds
- 5 tbsp sunflower seeds
- other nuts and seeds to your liking
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Dissolve the yeast in tepid water or plant milk. Add the rest of the ingredients. MIx well. The dough will be heavy, moist and that is OK. Cover and let rise for 20 - 30 mins.
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When you do that, start your oven to heat up to 180°C/375F so it's well heated when the dough has risen. Line the bread mould with baking paper.
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Mix the risen dough gently with a spoon for few times and then spoon it into the bread mould. The dough will still be wet and sticky. Level it a bit with the spoon from above.
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Bake the bread at 180°C/375F for 35 - 40 mins or till it has a nice, brown crust and sounds hollow when tapped on.
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Once out of the oven, leave the bread for 5 mins and then, carefully, along with the paper, lift the bread out of the mould and transfer it to a cooling rack. Cool before cutting and serving or it'll be sticky and gummy and dry out later otherwise.
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It's great for sandwiches, along with soups and stews or toasted.
*PIN for later!*
