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!

    46 comments:

    Anonymous said...

    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!

    Danielle said...

    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!

    Anonymous said...

    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).

    Anonymous said...

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

    ts said...

    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.

    Sarah Smith said...

    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!!

    Whole Health Nutrition said...

    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!

    Sarah Smith said...

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

    Sarah said...

    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

    Jill@RealFoodForager.com said...

    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/

    Meagan said...

    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.

    Sarah Smith said...

    Thanks for the tip, Meagan!

    Yolanda said...

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

    Sarah Smith said...

    Great, I'm glad it worked for you!

    Anonymous said...

    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:)

    Anonymous said...

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

    Sarah Smith said...

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

    Anonymous said...

    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

    Sarah Smith said...

    Wow, thanks Katie!

    shend said...

    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.

    Sarah Smith said...

    Awww, thanks Shend!!

    Anonymous said...

    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?

    Sarah Smith said...

    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?

    Anonymous said...

    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?

    Tara said...

    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! :)

    Sarah Smith said...

    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!

    Sarah Smith said...

    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).

    Anonymous said...

    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!

    Sarah Smith said...

    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!

    Stephen Witt said...

    Although the bread was tasty it was VERY flat and did not rise. I am going to put it all in one pan and see if I get a bigger loaf.

    Sarah Smith said...

    I'm guessing the difference is that I use an immersion blender to mix mine, which incorporates lots of air into the bread and makes it rise more. You could try either putting it together in a blender (if you don't have an immersion blender), or add a bit more of te baking soda and that should help.

    Robin @ toxicbeautyblog.com said...

    Can you sub coconut oil for the butter and will it come out right? I don't have enough butter!

    Sarah Smith said...

    I haven't tried it with coconut oil, but I bet it would work just fine!

    Kathy L. said...

    Hi, thank you for this recipe. I have been craving raisin cinnamon bread and this looks like it will do the trick :) Going to try it tomorrow. I am on the SCD diet. If I may, can I would suggest you put SCD in your titles too, for the recipes the qualify. I am sure the SCD community would be very grateful to find your recipes!

    Sarah Smith said...

    Hi Kathy,
    Thanks for the suggestion!

    MamaNellie said...

    I don't know if you are familiar with Dr. Mercola or not but he talks a lot about nutritional typing and you can take a test to see what type you are. Some people do better on high protein and some do better on high carb. I haven't done the test myself and am not promoting his website, but it might be helpful for you to look into.

    Anonymous said...

    Delicious! I omitted the cinnamon, nutmeg and raisins and added chopped cranberries. I used the KitchenAid mixer with the paddle. Next time I will try to whip it more to get more air and maybe it will rise a bit more.

    oceangal said...

    This recipe was delicious. I needed a cinnamon raisin bread for a school event for my SCD son and these fit the bill. I turned them into muffins and just watched my oven until they looked down. I think I baked them for 14-18 minutes.

    Sarah Smith said...

    GREAT! Thanks for letting me know!

    Anonymous said...

    Hi Tara, if you freeze your nuts whole before you crush/blend/blitz them to get flour you will get a finer result. The freezing slows the release of the oils and allows you to blend longer before it turns to almond butter! If mine aren't frozen I blitz them to a courser consistency flour first then freeze and re-blitz when I am ready to bake with them to get the finer flour.

    Unknown said...

    I'm confused .. I love your recipes ibut you use honey to cook with for example in bread and muffins and I was researching especially Sally Fallon ... and they say not to cook with raw honey it's changes it and is unhealthy??? Any thoughts

    Sarah Smith said...

    I have seen some people say not to cook raw honey (although I've not seen Sally Fallon take that stance) but there are also many who say it is fine to cook with it. Of course any enzymes would be lost in cooking, but that is true of all cooked foods. I myself have never had any issues with cooking honey, and given that there is no consensus about that in the real food community, I don't worry about using it in recipes. If you prefer, you could probably substitute maple syrup in this recipe and it should, work out fine.

    Unknown said...

    http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/is-cooking-honey-unhealthy/ This is one example ... really want to be sure be for I keep using it .. thanks ... just made your lemon muffins yum! Thanks

    Sarah Smith said...

    Yes, I know Sarah Pope has said she does not cook honey, but I have never seen Sally Fallon reiterate that position. There are lots of others who do cook with honey (and of course, any honey not labelled as raw has already been exposed to heat), and since I've never had any issues from cooking with honey, I plan to continue to do so. As I said previously, though, if you want to use maple syrup instead, that should work fine.

    Anonymous said...

    HI i really loved this recipe I don't know why but sometimes it raw and i always put it eat 25 minutes then i add 10 extra minutes and it is burnt

    Sarah Smith said...

    I've never had that issue with this recipe, but you might be able to solve it by decreasing the temperature in your oven. That should make it where you can cook it longer without it burning.

    A couple other things to check would be how close your bread is to the top or bottom of the oven. Too close to the top would make it more likely to burn on top, and too close to the bottom of the oven would make it more likely to burn on bottom.