My favorite “bread” and the only one that I can actually eat right now is a coconut seed bread that I bake myself. I adapted a recipe from Tim Noake’s wonderful book The Real Meal Revolution, a recipe book from where I grew up – South Africa.
Why I modified the recipe
- I opted to leave out the sunflower seeds and almond flour because of the higher levels of oxalates in these seeds and nuts. I have an oxalate issue right now but I’m also concerned with all the nuts that I see in Paleo recipes. Another possible issue for someone with anxiety and low zinc is the high copper levels in nut flours.
- I typically don’t add sugar or anything sweet to baked goods so just left out the stevia/xylitol
- I love coconut anything so why not try all coconut flour – it worked out great!
The ingredients and recipe for my version
0.5 cup ground flax seeds (freshly ground)
1.5 cups coconut flour
2 tablespoons psyllium husk
250g / 1 cup plain Greek yogurt
6 organic or pastured eggs
10ml /2 teaspoons aluminum-free baking powder
0.5 teaspoon sea salt
Grind the seeds and mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl.
Mix the wet ingredients and combine with the dry ingredients using a wooden spoon.
Pour into a loaf pan that has been greased with butter.
Bake at 350 F/ 175 C for 50 minutes. I check it at 40 minutes and then take it out at 50 minutes once it starts to look brown on top and on the sides (I use a glass/pyrex loaf pan).
How to enjoy it?
It’s lovely eaten right away, warm and with loads of butter. I slice it thinly and keep a few slices in the fridge and freeze the rest in batches to use as needed through the next few weeks. It freezes really well and needs about 30 minutes to thaw at room temperature.
A few days a week I’ll have a slice with butter (I love butter!) and soft-boiled eggs, topped with whatever fermented vegetables we have on hand, and a side of avocado and left over vegetables from dinner the night before.
In case you’re curious, on this particular day, I used Kehoe’s Kitchen Fermented Paleo Mustard Pickles (it has a lot of cauliflower) and Kehoe’s Kitchen Beetroot & Ginger Sauerkraut. Both of these products are firm favorites in this household!
Similar products in the USA are made by The Brinery or FireFly Kitchens (just search online for “organic fermented vegetables”). Or make your own!
Remember if you buy fermented vegetables make sure to get them in the refrigerated section of the store. They need to be RAW in order to get all the benefits of the good bacteria for gut health and balancing your microbiome, and ultimately helping with reducing anxiety and depression.
The original recipe
Here is the original recipe from Tim Noake’s book (I don’t have the recipe book in hand right now as it’s still packed away with our move but I think this is the original)
0.5 cup ground flax seeds (freshly ground)
0.5 cup ground sunflower
1 cup almond flour or coconut flour
2 tablespoons psyllium husk
250g / 1 cup plain Greek yogurt or sour cream
6 organic or pastured eggs
10ml /2 teaspoons aluminum-free baking powder
0.5 teaspoon sea salt
Pinch stevia or teaspoon xylitol
Optional: Cinnamon, caraway seeds, pumpkin seeds, various chopped nuts and/or cranberries/raisins
Tim Noakes and anxiety and depression success stories
Here is some additional information about The Real Meal Revolution. It started out as a Banting recipe book and has grown into a movement in South Africa. Banting is similar to Paleo but does include dairy. My darling sister gave me a copy of this very popular book on one of my trips back to visit family and I really like it! It is fastest selling cook book in South African history with over 200,000 copies sold and is now available internationally in the UK, Australia and New Zealand.
In this blog post about anxiety and depression success stories when eating Paleo and grain-free, Alice shared this about her change to a Banting way of eating:
Three days after I stopped eating grains, my chronic depression lifted and has never returned (it’s three years later now). I had been a vegetarian most of my life, discovered in my early 50s that I was gluten intolerant, went off grains, started banting (Cape Town craze!) and have never felt better. Gut, mood, bones, energy, skin … all better!
Let us know if you try this recipe and enjoy it and do share some of your favorite fermented vegetable companies or recipe books.
And do let us know if you do better on a grain-free diet.