Flax & chia seeds bread recipe

Long time no see! Ha! I’m preparing my doctoral exams and these days I just feel empty in the evening after having spent the day writing, writing, writing! But a friend of mine asked for a good bread recipe, and I love this particular one. Now it’s a very strange bread recipe for me: I usually only eat whole wheat bread. But two things happened: 1. My bread maker broke. Yes, I was very sad. I needed to get a particular piece at a Lowes, but I have not gotten around to it yet. Partly because I need a ride, and then partly because I found the piece I needed (unsure if I can actually use it) but now have misplaced the piece it is supposed to be attached too! So yeah no bread maker. And 2. Well I ran out of whole wheat flour. Simple as that. So I decided I might as well use my regular flour stripped of all the fibers, and other good nutrients. Now, I also knew that making a bread like that, I would feel very bad about eating a bread devoid of fibers. So I looked in my pantry and found flax seeds and chia seeds. Perfect! Those have fibers too. So look here is the bread I made (I was inspired by a handmade whole wheat recipe I received in my 30 day vegan online workshop, I adapted it quite a bit though). This is not a perfect bread (I tried to calculate and maybe about 15 gr of fibers are missing for the whole recipe), but it is so delicious! Flax seeds have Omega-3 and lots of fibers and chia seeds have fibers, some protein and are just delicious!

Recipe:

1 cup warm water

2 tbsp agave nectar/maple syrup

1 tbsp yeast

2 cups flour + more as needed during kneading

½ cup flax seeds meal (just get your flax seeds through a coffee grinder – human cannot process whole flax seeds, you can only get nutrients from grinded flax seeds. I hear grinded flax seeds go bad fast, so I always buy whole. However, I still grind a cup or so at a time and keep whatever is left in the fridge).

¼ cup chia seeds

1 tsp salt

2 tbsp of oil

1-    Proof the yeast: put in a glass the cup of warm water, the yeast and the liquid sweetener. Wait for about 8-10 min until it is well foamy

2-    In the meanwhile, put in a big bowl the flour, flax seeds meal, chia seeds and salt. Mix a bit.

3-    Add in the oil and mix. Add the proofed yeast in the center of the flour and mix with a wooden spoon. Put more flour as needed to make this mix more into a dough.

4-    Once it comes together as a dough, use your hands and knead, adding flour as is needed for the dough to hold together and form a nice rounded dough. Knead for a bit (about 5 minutes).

5-    Put in a warm place (I put the light on in my oven and put the bowl with the dough inside) covered with a moist clean towel. Leave it to rise for 1 hour 15 min.

6-    After the necessary wait time, punched down your dough to get the air out (you can sprinkle some flour so that the dough does not stick too much to your hands) and knead. There is no particular set time for kneading – don’t do it too long (too long would be 10 min I think), but still do it enough (like 4-5 min).

7-    Once you feel you have kneaded the dough enough, either put it in a bread pan to form a loaf, or do like I do and cut it to make individual portions of bread. If so, put it on some baking paper, and space it wide enough, it does rise a bit!

8-    Leave it in a warm spot for the next 30-45 minutes.

9-    I usually use the point of a knife to cut the dough a bit like on French bread. I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary.

10-Pre-heat your oven to 350°F and put your bread in for 20-25 min.

11-Enjoy! (with nice homemade blueberry jam or homemade hummus!)

It might seem like a lot to do, but honestly it does not take that long. The first part might be 10 minutes long, the second part might be a little bit less than that, and then you just have to put it in the oven. So it’s perfect for those days where you’re at home for a good period of time, which as a PhD student happens to me a lot. I love to take breaks to make some delicious bread!

On the Kombucha front everything is great! The last was a bit bitter, I think a full 1/3 cup is really needed for the Kombucha to have that great taste. I hope your bread making will be great. And I apologize for the lack of pictures… I ran out of yeast so I cannot do it again and take picture for a while!

Sophie