Awesome Paleo Seed Bread

We can still hardly believe it! Someone actually came up with a gluten-free, relatively slow carb (low glycemic), high nutrient, honest to goodness bread recipe.  Just like more conventional bread, you can slice it, toast it, eat it cold or room temperature. You can make sandwiches, french toast, burgers, bruschetta, and so on and so on. It’s very hearty and filling so we prefer open face sandwiches so we don’t get nut gut (that heavy feeling some people get after eating too many nuts), but it’s your call.

Guess what else? It tastes delightfully yummy. Its such a nice texture, too. After decades of gluten-free flavorless sawdust starch wads trying to pass for “bread,” we had resigned ourselves to give up bread all together. So, we did, and we were fine without it. It was a liberating exercise in non-attachment and personal growth, so we’re grateful for those time.

But now, it is the dawn of a new era and Jane of Jane’s Healthy Kitchen is one of our culinary heros as of the day she posted this fantastic Paleo pumpernickel recipe. You go, Jane!  We love the faux pumpernickel version, and we have adapted (de-pumpernickelerized) it to what we call Paleo seed bread for broader appeal and adaptability.

This recipe has helped a lot of folks we work with get off gluten and not mind it one bit. Feel proud, Jane. Feel proud.

Can’t I just go buy some gluten-free bread, you may ask? The short answer is yes, you can, but you might not like it or feel very good after you eat it. You’ll probably pay a pretty penny as well.  As for homemade, you even have to be careful with recipes you choose to make.

One of the morals of the gluten-free story is…

Gluten-free does not necessarily mean healthy!

1. So many “gluten-free” baked goods are not organic and can be laden with nasty chemicals, especially those used to grow conventional potatoes that are turned into potato flour (starch).
2. Gluten-free products often have added unhealthy sugars and sweeteners.
3. Gluten-free baked products are often made of simple, refined starches that are actually higher glycemic than white flour. They definitely have the advantage of not doing the damage that gluten does to internal organs, the nervous system and overall immune system impact. However, high glycemic foods (both sugars and starches that turn to simpler sugars) raise blood sugar and trigger insulin secretion, which, in excess (and it doesn’t take much) can, accelerate inflammation, fat storage and aging.
4. Read labels carefully, because the above mentioned high glycemic gluten-free products can become a veritable all-you-can-eat buffet for the naughty bacteria in your microbiome (your microbial flora). These critters love to eat sugars and things that turn to sugar so they can quickly grow their forces and expand their pathogenic territories…. And make you crave more sugar so you’ll do it all over again… The many and varied diseases that dysbiosis (imbalanced flora) causes are innumerable. Some examples include autoimmune conditions, leaky gut, metabolic syndrome, obesity, neurological disorders, mental disorders, and skin diseases.
5. Gluten-free products (not all of them, so don’t get us wrong) often taste like nothing, or like ass. There, we said it. Are we allowed to use that word in a blog? What if you’re talking about a donkey? Anyway, these products so often mislead people into thinking that gluten-free baked goods have to taste like, um, you know, “donkeys.” This is not a good thing if you have a bonafide gluten sensitivity, which, thanks to fiddling with wheat genes, many people have these days (most of whom are unaware), but that’s another story for another post.

However, another moral of the gluten-free story is that there are gluten-free recipes and commercial products that are not junk and, in fact, are awesome food, and this is one of them.

Note: We actually doubled Jane’s recipe so we can make full “sandwich size” slices, but you can easily half it and make mini loaves. It freezes well, so don’t worry about any going to waste.

Without further adieu, here’s the recipe…