Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Grain-free Cinnamon Raisin Bread (GAPS-legal, primal, gluten-free)

While looking for a little variety in our breakfast options, I was reminiscing about the sprouted cinnamon raisin bread we enjoyed prior to the GAPS Diet.  So I developed this recipe for grain-free cinnamon raisin bread, and it is wonderful!  This is my daughter's new favorite breakfast, and I love that it is less sweet than the muffins I typically make.

My favorite way to serve this is to toast it and spread it with softened butter.  If you want to make toast, use a toaster oven and try to keep the bread from being directly over the heating element.  I'm not sure whether this bread would stand up to a regular toaster, as it is fairly soft and the coconut flour can burn easily.

Cinnamon Raisin Bread
  • 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
  • 1/4 cup honey
  • 5 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
  • 1/4 tsp finely ground celtic sea salt
  • 1/4 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
  • pinch nutmeg
  • 1/3 cup coconut flour (this should be sifted if you are not using an immersion blender)
  • 1/4 cup almond flour, preferably from crispy nuts
  • 1/2 cup raisins
  1. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over low heat.  Turn off heat, add the honey, and give a little stir.
  2. In a medium bowl, combine the eggs, salt, baking soda, vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg.  Blend well using an immersion blender or hand mixer.
  3. Add the butter and honey, and blend well.
  4. Add the coconut flour and almond flour.  Blend well with an immersion blender or hand mixer.
  5. Fold in the raisins with a spoon or spatula.
  6. Butter two small loaf pans, or line them with parchment paper.  I used loaf pans that were 7.5X3.75X2.25 inch.  Although the batter would all fit into a larger loaf pan, it will cook better as two smaller loaves so that the coconut flour will not be overcooked before the middle is set.
  7. Pour the batter into the loaf pans.
  8. Bake the loaves at 325 degrees F for about 25-35 minutes, until the middle of each loaf is set and the top has started to turn a nice golden brown color.  I like to cook this bread for a few minutes past when the middle is set so that the bread will be nice and dry for toasting.
  9. Remove from the oven and cool completely before removing from the loaf pans.
  10. Store in the fridge or freezer.  I like to use a good bread knife to cut each loaf into many slices.  I then place a small square of parchment paper between each slice, wrap it all in plastic wrap, and store it in the freezer.  The parchment paper ensures that I can easily pull out just one slice at a time.  This bread freezes very well, and makes great toast!
This post is part of Fat Tuesday, Monday Mania and Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways!

    29 comments:

    1. We tried this recipe yesterday and my family loved it! I'll have to make another one today as it's almost gone. We didn't have small loaf pans so we just made one loaf in a larger pan. I had to let it cook longer and also lowered the heat to 300 after a while. Turned out great!

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    2. Ooh, I am excited to try this recipe! We had a few grain-free baking disasters recently that made me shy away from any baking for a while, but I think it's time to get back on the horse. :) Thanks for the recipe!

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    3. Do you use raw honey? For me getting raw honey is just impossible.Is it ok to use the honey which looks a bit in the iiquid form, the brown color( syrup look).

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      1. raw honey isn't raw once you cook with it:) heating the honey in the cooking process kills the natural enzymes in the honey. so save your good raw honey for eating on food that you don't cook. and since you can't get raw honey you don't have to worry about it:)

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    4. Hey I beleive baking soda is not gaps legal.But your recipes says gaps legal. Can you please clear my doubt.

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      1. baking soda is NOT gaps legal, but a lot of people cheat with it!

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      2. Actually, the 10th ed of the GAPS book says pure soda of bicarbonate IS GAPS-legal.

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    5. Thanks for yet another great recipe! Your blog is my go-to place for GAPS baking. Every recipe I've followed has turned out perfectly.

      On this recipe I subbed dried apricots and almond slivers for raisons, as I don't like them. It worked very well.

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    6. There is no need to use raw honey since the bread will be baked anyway. I do try to use raw honey for uncooked applications, though.

      Pure soda of bicarbonate is listed as legal in the 10th edition of the GAPS book. I think people still need to be a bit careful with it, though, as it can reduce stomach acid if you use it too much.

      Thanks Tara!!

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    7. Whole Health NutritionJanuary 12, 2012 9:50 AM

      I made this last night and used my muffin pan since I didn't have 2 small pans. They were awesome. Made 12 muffins and the kids loved them!

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    8. Great, Whole Health Nutrition! Thanks for letting me know!

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    9. This recipe looks great! I would love to start experimenting with coconut flour.

      I'm hosting a make-ahead meals link-up over at my blog, Raising Isabella, and I would love to have you come link up this post here:

      http://naturalparentingunnaturalworld.blogspot.com/2012/01/make-ahead-monday-2.html

      Hope to see you there!
      Sarah

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    10. This great post is featured at Sunday Snippets this week! Thanks for sharing! Come and check it out!

      http://realfoodforager.com/sunday-snippets-january-15-2012/

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    11. If you toss the raisins in the flour before adding it to the batter they won't all fall down to the bottom of the bread.

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    12. I really enjoy it!! Thanks for posting the recipe!

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    13. This recipe is truly outstanding. I have tried many grain free recipes, and none of them so far have been keepers, but this is definitely a keeper!!!
      Katie Mathews

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    14. I am with Katie, this is the BEST ever grain free bread recipe. There is a farmer at our market that asked me to make him a grain free bread and he will be delighted your recipe. Thank you Much, Sarah.

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    15. My daughter shared this recipe with me. It was perfect & delicious when she made it. I've tried it twice and neither time did the bread rise. The taste was good but it was dense and did not rise. 2nd time I bought fresh spices and baking soda. What went wrong?

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      1. Hmmm, I'm not sure. I use an immersion blender to put it together. Does your daughter as well? And do you? If not, maybe it needs to get whipped lots more?

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      2. She used her kitchen aid stand mixer as did I. She did mix a long time. Maybe that's it. I would love to try it again. How long should I whip the egg mixture? and do I just blend in or whip in the flours?

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      3. My guess is that you should whip the egg mixture for probably 5 minutes (and if you have a whisk attachment for your kitchen-aid, use that instead of the normal paddle attachment). And there is no risk of overmixing with coconut and almond flour, so you can mix those in as long as you like. Please let me know what works and how it turns out!

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    16. Wow, this looks great. I'm curious about your comment about using crispy nuts for almond flour. The only nuts we eat are prepared a la Nourishing Traditions, but I've always given in to commercial almond flour because I just can't get my crispy nuts into a nice flour. If you know the trick please share! I would be very grateful.

      As an aside, I just found your blog and it's wonderful. I was on GAPS for a little over a year about three years ago. I, too, struggled with low energy. After GAPS I moved to Paleo which seemed like a natural transition. Still, the energy and moods were the pits. I then slowly allowed my diet to veer off the tracks (for me, that means dried fruit, too many "naturally sweetened" home baked treats etc..). I never did eat junk food, but give me a good, dark organic chocolate bar and you've got me (after I annihilate the whole thing and ask for seconds).

      There's a lot of talk in the 'paleosphere' about safe starches and the detriment of low carb diets now. I'm a little worried about reawakening my sleeping adrenal insufficiency giant. I'm already, after 2 weeks of intro, noticing the tell tale signs of too low of a carb intake - sleep being a big one. I'm really interested to hear how things progress for you.

      Anyway, fantastic blog and please let me know about making almond flour that actually works in baking from crispy nuts! :)

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      1. Hi Tara,
        My crispy almond flour is not especially fine. I just grind my almonds up in a cuisinart. So I am always using this homemade almond flour in my recipes, even though it is not very fine.

        In this bread recipe, I think the almonds may also get chopped a little finer as I put the recipe together since I use an immersion blender to mix it all up.

        Yeah, there is a lot of mixed info about low-carb being good or bad. I think it maybe depends on the person, and in particular, women of childbearing age seem to complain more about the ill effects of low carb. If I were to do it all over again, I would definitely focus on eating way more carbs from the beginning of GAPS. On intro, though, I think tiredness is normal as the body does a tremendous amount of healing and there is also lots of die-off occurring. But once intro is over, I would definitely try to include lots of carb-y things. In case you haven't seen it, I wrote a post about energy problems while on GAPS here:
        http://nourishedandnurtured.blogspot.com/2012/01/troubleshooting-energy-problems-while.html

        And right now I'm having great success with using homemade ice cream to boost my energy (that probably isn't the best plan at the beginning of GAPS, though, when you are trying to really starve out the bad bugs in the gut).

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    17. Is the batter supposed to be as runny as water? I followed the recipe exactly and mine was this way, so that the raisins line the entire bottom of the bread. Do you separate the eggs and beat the whites, then fold them in to get the batter to a thicker consistency?
      The flavor was still absolutely delicious!

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      1. My batter for this is very runny, although not quite as runny as water. The raisins do sink towards the bottom half of the bread when I make it, but we don't mind at all. There are a couple things you could do to prevent this (although I haven't tried either of these myself):
        -rather than mixing the raisins into the batter, sprinkle them on top after you've poured the batter into a baking dish (although this way, the raisins may all be on top instead of bottom)
        -Megan commented above that dusting the raisins with coconut flour keeps them from sinking
        Let me know what works for you, and happy baking!

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