You guys know how much I like my books. Raincoast Books was a dear and sent me Josey Baker Bread. It’s not only a fabulous recipe book with a cute guy in it, it’s a story about a guy who never ever thought he’d end up in the place he was as a full time baker; he’s a guy who at one time never thought he’d bake a single loaf of bread.
This book is a great one for advanced bakers and raw novices alike, because the recipes are graduated in difficulty. They begin with store-bought yeast. Eventually he talks about developing and using sourdough starters (and how to keep a very small one, compared to some of the starters I’ve seen). He teaches cool tricks of the trade, like what you need to make a rising basket (something I had never even heard of as a home baker), and the vagaries of working with different types of flours and grains like whole wheat, spelt, and rye.
He even has a recipe for a gluten free bread called “Adventure Bread.” It’s unlike any gluten free bread I’ve ever seen, because there’s not a drop of any type of flour of any kind in it: it’s entirely made of nuts, seeds, rolled oats, and psyllium. It also has no refined sugar. This amazing “bread” is high in fiber, high in protein, low glycemic, super healthy, and–best of all–credited in print as inspired by blogger, Sarah Britton of My New Roots.
I asked for permission to share this recipe, because, while it’s amazing in its own right, it’s also an example of some of the really wild and fabulous recipes you’ll find in Josey Baker Bread.
- 2 1/4 cups rolled oats
- 1 cup toasted sunflower seeds
- 1/2 cup toasted pumpkin seeds
- 3/4 cup toasted chopped almonds
- 3/4 cup flax seeds
- 1/3 cup psyllium seed husk
- 3 tbsp chia seeds
- 2 tsp sea salt, fine grind
- 2 tbsp maple syrup
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 2 1/2 cups water
- Mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl, and add the three wet ingredients. Mush the dough up well with a spoon to ensure that everything is well mixed.
- Oil your loaf pan and scoop the dough into it. Smooth out the top so that it looks nice. Cover and refrigerate for 3 hours, or up to a full day.
- Remove from the fridge and allow bread to return to room temperature.
- Bake bread in the middle of a preheated oven at 400F for one hour. Carefully remove the loaf from pan and allow it to cool for at least two hours before slicing.
- Keep unused bread refrigerated for freshness, or consume within 2 days.
About the bread…
This nutty, dense and hearty bread is best served sliced about 1/2″ and toasted. It’ll need to cool fully before you slice it, otherwise it may crumble.
Because the bread is made of such chunky materials and there’s no gluten, a binding agent has to be used. That’s where chia seeds and psyllium husk come into play: two materials that get soft and sticky-gooey when waterlogged. You won’t get any rise out of this bread, so the dimensions that you shape it into will be more or less how it looks once it comes out of the oven.
To be sure that your recipe is really gluten-free, you’ll have to ensure that your oats are gluten-free and take steps in your own kitchen to eliminate any risk of cross contamination.
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