Salt Lake Bread

The Food Blogger is always up to date with the latest trends. We practically invented regional and seasonal, now it is the topic of allergen-free and healthy that drives us again into the laboratories - er, kitchens, to invent in endless series of experiments good for mankind or at least the readership. Blogs like kochtrotz or Anie’s Delight are good examples of this.

The topic is also trending in my environment. I cook occasionally gluten-free and vegan. That succeeds partly quite well, as one can hopefully infer from my recipes. Recently, on the search for gluten-free baking, I stumbled across the the book Vegan & vollwertig genießen. They suggested to experiment with chickpea flour as egg substitute.

The first test run was reason to acquire a package of this flour, but served no great gain in knowledge, because the stirred spelt flour pasta could not be impressed by the said 2 tablespoons of chickpea flour as an egg simulation - they became as ever a neat dough to noodle through the machine, taste-wise the flour did not stand out.

So now the package is in the house, what to do with it? Yes, falafel, sure, we already had, and they also go better with cooked fruit. While browsing the internet, I came across a simple chickpea loaf. Too simple for my taste, it should only consist of chickpea flour, water. Oil and salt (good thing there was no egg provided - chickpea flour as an egg substitute in a chickpea flour bread would probably be pretty exotic then). I didn’t quite trust the recipe and added a clove of garlic and some dried rosemary needles, chopped.

• 250 ml water
• 380 g chickpea flour
• 2 tablespoons oil
• salt

knead into a dough, it said. Best to let it rest overnight (I didn’t), then put it in the oven at 220 degrees in the fruitcake dough pan and bake for just under half an hour. Ok, I’ve done this. The dough is first ok, crumbly, but it holds. Then off into the mold, looks good. After baking, however, a certain disillusionment. The bottom looks like a salt desert in Utah and sensory experience or tasting the result is unfortunately pretty close to it.

I try to save what can be saved, make small sandwiches out of it with tomato, cream cheese, chopped mushrooms and plenty of sweet chili sauce, try to coat them again with oil and grill them…. Still tastes like salt desert. So, a flop. What just worked, is crumbling them up and roasting them with nettle seeds until you can use them in soups for sprinkling.

Well, I hope the other recipes in the book will be more joyful. Also, a quick try of cashew nut puree as a substitute for sour cream was not a hit. I already find that vegan and healthy does not have to exclude itself with tasty and beautiful to look at. There I lobe me for example the meanwhile much baked Schopfbrot in the spelt flour variant (recipe follows). Sensational!

So if you need two big tupperware boxes full of salt desert pieces - please let me know!

dried-up lake dough baked tray, cracks in the dough