A good paleo bread has been really hard to come by.  A good bread that works for the low-FODMAP diet my sister and are now supposed to try out has been … well, even harder to come by.  🙂  But this bread can fit either bill, depending whether you use cashew butter and cashew milk (which makes it paleo) or peanut butter and peanut milk (which makes it low-FODMAP).

(You can find instructions on how to make peanut milk here; I’ve been using this nut bag, which has worked very well so far.)

I’ve used this bread for sandwiches, French toast, and making bread crumbs.  The bread crumbs have let me make fried mozzarella sticks again, which has been a delight (just substitute tapioca starch for the flour mix in that recipe to make it grain-free!).  The only hiccup to keep in mind is that since this bread is fairly dark in color, the fried bread crumbs will come out looking very dark indeed, and look burned — but they aren’t, and taste fine.  🙂

Before getting down to business, though, let me take a second to exalt the virtues of the bread pan I used to make the loaf in the picture, which is 13x4x4 inches.  You pour two loaves’ worth of batter into the pan, and it produces one extra-long loaf with taller sides and a squarer shape than you get out of a traditional loaf pan, especially when making something quickbread-style.  The resulting bread slices are much, much nicer for sandwiches, which is a lovely touch when you have to make all your bread yourself!

But anyway.  Bread.  🙂

Nut Butter Bread

Yield:  2 loaves

Ingredients:

• 8 eggs
• 1 cup nut butter (either cashew butter, or sugar-free peanut butter)
• 1/2 cup tapioca starch
• 1/2 cup almond flour
• 1/2 cup paleo dough mix
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp locust bean gum
• 1/2 cup nut milk (either cashew milk, or peanut milk)
• 2 T yeast
• 2 T paleo dough mix
• coconut oil and tapioca starch, for greasing and flouring

1.  Preheat the oven to 300 degrees Farenheit.  Grease the bread pan(s) with coconut oil, then “flour” them with tapioca starch, and set aside.

2.  Heat your nut milk in the microwave just until warm, then whisk in the yeast and 2 T paleo dough mix, and set aside to start proofing.  (Make sure the bowl is plenty big, I’ve found yeast really loves nut milk and will really poof up while you work!)

3.  Measure your nut butter into its own bowl, and make sure it’s well-combined and smooth.  Natural peanut butter in particular will naturally separate over time; lumps in the peanut butter will mean lumps in the bread, so if necessary re-integrate it with a hand or stand mixer.  Set aside.

4.  In yet another bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients — tapioca starch, almond flour, paleo dough mix, salt, and locust bean gum — and set aside.

5.  Separate the eggs, putting the yolks with the nut butter and the whites in their own bowl (preferably a large stand mixer bowl).  Using a stand or hand mixer, whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form.  (It may be necessary to do this in several batches, depending on the capacity of the bowl — eight whipped egg whites take up a lot of space!)

6.  Now, you should have four bowls of ingredients — the nut butter and egg yolks, the nut milk and proofing yeast, the dry ingredients, and the whipped egg whites.  In a large bowl (preferably a large stand mixer bowl), combine the nut butter/egg yolk mixture and the nut milk/yeast mixture until uniform.  Then, this mixture and the dry ingredients to the egg whites and mix until uniform.  The batter can get quite stiff without the egg whites mixed in, so if you’re having a hard time getting everything to combine, add some of the egg white early to smooth things out.

7.  Divide the finished batter between your greased-and-floured loaf pans, then bake in the preheated oven for 50 minutes.  Let cool 5 minutes before removing the loaves from their pans, then slice warm.