Another rainy day, already having been to the shops, and realising I hadn’t nearly enough bread in the house. What else was I to do but to simply bake my own?
I threw a few things together willy-nilly and hoped it would work. By golly, it did! It’s one of the most delicious breads I’ve tasted in a long time. And healthy, too!
The treacle I used in this bread is made of 100% sugar beets and 25g of it contains 64% of your daily requirement for iron, 24% of magnesium, 23% potassium and 65% folic acid. Add to that the goodness of the seeds and you’re on to a winner!
Excuse the bad picture but my kitchen’s rather dark and the artificial light does it no justice!
To make this bread, you need:
- 400g wholemeal flour
- 100g chickpea flour
- 1 sachet dried yeast
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 tbsp sunflower seeds
- 2 tbsp pumpkin seeds
- 1/4 cup treacle (or molasses to some of you, but sugar beet one, not sugar cane!)
- water
Method:
Mix the flours, salt, yeast and seeds together. Add the treacle and just enough water to make a pliable dough. Knead it through for a good 5 minutes.
Leave it to rise in a warm, draft-free place until it has risen to twice its size. My kitchen was rather cool, so it took nearly 1.5 hours to rise, but if you want to speed it up, leave it somewhere warm.
Once it’s risen, knock it back and knead it through one more time on a floured surface. Then form it into an even loaf and bake it in a pre-heated oven at 180C for about 40 minutes or until the bread sounds hollow when you gently knock on the bottom of it. That’s how you know your bread is done.
In order to get a lovely crust, leave a small oven proof dish full of water in the bottom of the oven while the bread bakes and brush it with water about half-way through.
Leave it to cool on a wire rack before cutting. That’s if you can wait that long. I’ve had my first slice as soon as it was cool enough to handle.
This is a rather firm bread, that is full of goodness and fills you up nicely.
Cubs'n'Coffee 
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