Yesterday began the Great Kitchen Hurricane of 2011!  This, friends, is what happens when a foodie is deprived of her kitchen for 9 of the last 15 months – something just snaps, and it can only be fixed by feverish food-making.

First in the oven was coconut flour bread, a wonderfully easy recipe for those who avoid grains or gluten, by necessity or choice.  I modified the recipe found at Nourished Kitchen, adding in baking soda and lemon juice to give the bread a bit more loft; I think the lemon gives the bread a little fresh taste, too.  I chose to make our dairy-free, substituting coconut oil for ghee (clarified butter).  If you can tolerate real honest-to-goodness butter, try cultured butter to give the bread a little zing.

Coconut flour is very absorbent and dense, so a little goes a long way.  Yes, 3/4 of a cup will net you an entire loaf of bread!  In a regular loaf pan, one recipe creates a loaf about 2 inches high, so double the recipe and you’re looking at a great sandwich bread.

Regarding ingredients: I highly recommend sourcing pastured eggs whenever possible – they are the reason my bread is such a rich yellow color.  Chickens raised on pasture (as opposed to caged or penned) produce eggs that are far more nutritive. I’m borrowing these figures from Cheeseslave, who borrowed them from Mother Earth News.  According to their research in 2009, pastured eggs have:

5 times more vitamin D
2/3 more vitamin A
2 times more omega-3 fatty acids
3 times more vitamin E
7 times more beta carotene

How do you like them eggs?  I like them enough to pay $5-7 per dozen – more expensive than the supermarket variety, and totally worth the extra cost, in my humble opinion.

Coconut Flour Bread

Ingredients:
3/4 cup coconut flour
6 pastured eggs
1/2 cup butter, ghee or coconut oil (melted)
1/4 cup honey or maple syrup
1/2 teaspoon unrefined sea salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
juice of 1/2 lemon

 

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Grease loaf pan very well, or line with parchment paper.

2. Combine coconut flour, eggs, honey and salt in a mixing bowl and beat with a whisk or spoon until you have a smooth paste.  Add in baking soda and lemon and mix lightly.

3. Pour batter into loaf pan and bake for 40 minutes.

4. Cool on rack for at least 15 minutes before slicing.

Total time: 45 minutes (5 minutes prep, 40 minutes baking, 15 minutes cooling)

If you try this recipe, please come back and let me know how you like it.  Tomorrow, I’ll feature another recipe from this weekend’s madness.  For now, I’ll leave you with a little peek at what our vegetable beds had waiting for me yesterday morning: a clutch of chard, still going strong after being planted last spring, and plenty big for our morning scramble.