On the way to school, my daughter asked her friend what she had for breakfast, to which the other girl answered very proudly, “I have had the healthiest food of this world, Bread and Jam”.
Yes, Bread is blindly accepted as the healthiest food and is hence a staple in the pantries of all modern families. But can I dare to say that we might have got freedom from colonization but are still slaves to the deceiving colonial food called “Bread”?? Can I dare to say that Bread is a storehouse of gluten, artificial colors and flavors, leavening agents, texture enhancers, active yeasts and a hoard of other chemicals which are harmful to the extent of interfering with our immune system?
Yet, what is it in Bread that our mornings compulsively orbit around them? Sun or no sun, Bread is always there on our tables to start our days with. Lately many people have even switched to Bread-based diets like having Sandwiches for lunch, Burgers for evening snack and Pizzas for dinner. Just a brown colored cousin of the white Bread doesn’t make much difference in the scenario of the nutrition quotient and yet we comfort ourselves by thinking that Brown Bread is an enormously smart choice. So to say, the Satanic Bread has become omnipresent and omnipotent in current times, courtesy our laziness, our over-dependence on packaged food items, our so called no-time-to-breathe lifestyles.
It’s an unpalatable truth that commercial Bread is essentially insidious in nature. But at the same time we are bound by our habit of eating easy in a fast-paced life. This article attempts to invent a mid-way which introduces a win-win situation. The answer is Homemade Immune-Boosting Keto Bread and it goes unsaid that a little shuttling around your kitchen counter is mandatory in this case.
We all are home on the seventh day of the week and so can use a tiny chunk of our happy Sundays in baking our own Breads—Breads that are wholesome, nutritious and sans anything that is supposedly artificial and harmful. This Immune-Boosting Bread demands nothing more than thirty odd minutes to be arranged and once done can be stored in airtight boxes for one full week. Moreover this Bread helps in weight loss as it doesn’t have any grains in it. Yet, one can always tweak around the recipe and add whole grains to the Bread if one needs her dose of carbohydrates.
Yes, this Bread recipe is very versatile and doesn’t limit our options. Baking is all about permuting and combining ingredients, customizing flavors and essences, blending and mixing an array of matters, developing warmth and temperatures, introducing stuffings, toppings and layerings, adding intricacies with plating and garnishing and much much more. It is also about unleashing the creative aspect of our being, venting out pent-up moods, creating a completely new universe where we are the master creator. Baking is quintessentially cathartic and therapeutic.
So, come rise in love.
Recipe for The Immune-Boosting Keto Bread
Ingredients
2 Cups Quinoa Flour
1 Cup fresh ground Flax Meal
1 Beetroot grated
1 Whole Egg(whisked)
½ Cup Buttermilk (milk mixed with white vinegar)
1/4th Cup Olive Oil (can be substituted with 1/4th cup Apple Sauce)
Pink Himalayan Salt as per taste
½ tsp Baking Powder
½ tsp Baking Soda
An assortment of Seeds for topping (Chia Seeds, Sesame Seeds, Nigella Seeds, Pumpkin Seeds, Melon Seeds)
Method
In a large bowl whisk the egg till it is frothy and fluffy. Add Buttermilk to it followed by Olive Oil and grated Beetroot. Whisk again. Throw in the dry ingredients into the bowl and give a thorough mix with soft strokes. You can use extra water/milk to adjust consistency. Line a baking tray with parchment paper and pour the semi-flowing batter. Tap it to ensure that there aren’t any naughty air bubbles latent inside. Layer the top of the batter with a mélange of colorful seeds.
Toss the tray into a preheated oven and bake it at 350-400 degrees for 35-40 mins. Be patient while the baby grows inside the tummy of the oven. Try not to open the oven again and again. Release the Bread from the uber hot environment and allow it to sit, relax and breathe some fresh cool air for a good 30 minutes. Once acclimatized to the mood and the temperature of the room, the Bread is all yours. For best results refrigerate the new-born Bread for an hour to get a firm exterior. Voila!! your mornings are sorted. With this magenta-tinted vibrant Bread in your kitchen closet you are armed to face the big bad world for another one week.
Slice the Bread vertically or cut them into wedges, it will taste divine in whatsoever way. You can top them with water poached eggs or dunk them into your morning Chai or carry them as dry snack for mid-mornings/evenings or munch them casually with some Greek yogurt during late nocturnal hours, the choices are endless. They are every bit nutritious and will force you to fall in love with them every time you sniff their fresh scent.
Needless to say, Beetroot has zero cholesterol and is a storehouse of vitamins. Quinoa is a seed which consists mostly of water and Flaxseeds are high in Omega-3 fatty acids, fiber and many other unique plant compounds. The Bread is indeed immune-boosting.
Variations:
- Grated Beetroot can be substituted with Grated Carrots, Grated Bottle Gourd or Spiced Pumpkin Puree, everything else remaining same.
- The batter can be made even more fulfilling by adding some Ragi flour and Oats flour to Quinoa & Flax Meal.
- It can be elevated to a Fruit Bread by throwing in chunks of apples, bananas and berries into half of the poured batter and then followed in by pouring the rest into the baking tin.
- It can also be converted into fudgy Brownies by adding 2 tbsp raw Cocoa Powder, 1 tbsp Coffee powder and ½ cup Honey to the batter. Add hot water to the batter while amalgamating cocoa and coffee into it to get a rich color and texture. Finish with nuts and Choco-chips instead of Seeds.
- It can also be made Vegetarian/Vegan by eliminating Eggs and adding Chia egg instead.(Chia Egg is 2tbsp Chia seeds mixed with some water, left to stand for 15 mins to fluff up, bind and become thick & gelatinous, almost like pseudo-eggs). If one doesn’t have access to Chia Seeds, then yogurt can as well be used.
Go ahead, collect the raw material and don’t be scared to experiment. After all, Perfection is just so overrated. So get into the skin of your healthiest selves, shout a loud “No” to store-bought Breads- white/brown/multigrain and whatever, wear the baker’s hat and roll on. The rest will be history, I promise.
(P.S. Don’t follow the age old “toothpick insertion method” to check the done-ness of the Bread, ‘coz that would be too late and the Bread might end up being overcooked and dry. Whether it is Bread or Cake, they tend to cook a little more even after pulling them out of the oven due to the inbuilt heat inside them. So it is always advisable to bring them out of the hot atmosphere just 5 minutes before you think they should be done.)
