The Paleo Ketogenic Diet - PK Bread

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[UPDATED APRIL 2022]
Please see My book - Paleo-Ketogenic: The Why and The How for more detail.

THE PK DIET IS NON NEGOTIABLE

Delicious PK Bread!

Preface

This page is one of 4 pages on the Paleo Ketogenic Diet. Please see also:

Introduction

“Give us this day our daily bread”
The Lord’s Prayer, Matthew 6:9–13, English Standard Version, The Bible

The single biggest reason for lapse on the PK diet is absence of bread. To secure the diet for life you must first make PK bread. I have searched and nothing is currently available commercially which passes muster. Loaves will become available as demand builds, but in the meantime you have to make your own bread.

If you have any friends or family offering to help you, then top of the list must be “please make my daily bread!”.

PK bread consists of just linseed, Sunshine Salt and water. Americans, and others, may be more familiar with linseed being referred to as flax or flaxseed or common flax. There is technically a subtle difference - flax is grown as a fibre plant that is used for linen. Linseed is grown for its seed. The flax plant is taller than linseed and is pulled by hand or nowadays by machine.

YouTube Link

You can see me on YouTube making this bread at PK Bread YouTube link

Hammersmith Books - PK Bread Recipe Blog

You can access the full PK Bread recipe at Hammersmith Books The PK Cookbook: PK bread recipe

My journey with PK Bread

When I first started to develop PK Bread, I thought I would have to preface all references to it with……

"Do not expect this bread to taste and perform exactly like a conventional wheat-based loaf”.

How wrong could I be?!

My PK bread recipe evolved so much in my six months of experimentation that many of my greatest critics (one of which is me!) have been won over. The resultant loaf, made with golden linseed, looks exactly like a small brown Hovis.

Even if the loaf does not initially taste good to you, keep at it. Taste is acquired. A dear friend and colleague, namely the late Dr Alan Franklin, consultant paediatrician at Chelmsford, ran a trial with his allergic children. They, too, had to avoid grains and dairy. With their agreement Dr Franklin’s patients ate a portion of their least favourite food daily. This included foods that kids often dislike such as Brussels sprouts, mushrooms and avocado pears. No child had to eat the food more than 14 times (ie two weeks) before coming to like it.

We are not born with taste preferences, we acquire them. Primitive man, pottering through the jungle, would have tried new foods with great suspicion and reluctance. However, if he was not poisoned, but rather nourished by that food, then he would eat more and more of it and eventually would come to like it. By way of association of sensation, taste and satiety, he would progress to actively seeking out that food. In the long term he would farm and harvest such.

The above scenario reflects my personal journey with linseed bread. I initially viewed my dark brown brick with distaste and suspicion. I forced it down out of a sense of loyalty to the diet. However as I perfected the recipe I have come to look forward to and love it. It has character, texture and taste. It forms part of every breakfast and supper. My breakfast invariably has PK fried bread ie linseed bread fried in coconut oil or lard. My suppers often start with PK toast.

Linseed is particularly helpful because the PK diet can make one constipated. The high fibre content linseed mitigates this. This fibre is fermented in the large bowel to produce short chain fatty acids. These nourish the lining of the large bowel directly and this is highly protective against bowel cancer. Fermentation of vegetable fibre also produces hydrogen and methane. These gases make you fart. These farts are odourless. Put a match to them and they will explode ………not that I recommend this for diagnostic purposes! If your farts smell offensively then that is due to poor digestion of foods – the fermentation of protein produces the disgusting pong of hydrogen sulphide! The constituents of smelly farts are carcinogenic ie you can determine the potential health of your large bowel by smell.

Indeed, Professor Gibson, a food microbiologist from the University of Reading, divides people into “inflammables” and “smellies” – the inflammables (hydrogen and methane) have normal gut fermentation and the smellies (hydrogen sulphide) do not!

The Recipe

Actions Notes
Take 250gms whole linseed You could purchase in 250gm packs and that saves weighing it! Use dark or golden linseed grains - the golden grains produce a brown loaf, the dark a black one.

Do not use commercially ground linseed – the grinding is not fine enough, also it will have absorbed some water already and this stops it sticking together in the recipe. If you purchase linseed in bulk then you must weigh it really accurately in order to get the proportion of water spot on!

No raising agent is required
Pour half the linseed into the nutribullet together with one rounded teaspoon of sunshine salt.

Grind into a fine flour

Use the flat blade to get the finest flour

Grind until the machine starts to groan and sweat with the effort! You need a really fine flour to make a good loaf. This takes about 30 seconds The finer you can grind the flour the better it sticks together and the better the loaf. I do this in 2 batches or the blades “hollow out” the mix so that half does not circulate and grind fully.

Pour the ground flour into a mixing bowl
Repeat the above with the second half of seeds and add to mixing bowl. Whilst this is grinding, measure the water you need
Add in exactly 270ml water (not a typo – 270 it is!). Chuck it all in at once, do not dribble it in.

Stir it with a wooden spoon. Keep stirring. It will thicken over the course of 30 seconds. Keep stirring until it becomes sticky and holds together in a lump

The amount of water is critical! When it comes to cooking I am a natural chucker in of ingredients and hope for the best. But in this case – you must measure!

Initially this will look as if you have added far too much water! Keep stirring.

Use your fingers to scoop up a dollop of coconut oil or lard. Use this to grease the baking tin. Your hands will be covered in fat which means you can pick up your sticky dough without it sticking your hands.
Use your hands to shape the dough until it has a smooth surface.

Drop it into the greased baking tin.

Spend about 30 seconds doing this. Do not be tempted to knead or fold the loaf or you introduce layers of fat which stop it sticking to itself. This helps prevents the loaf cracking as it rises and cooks (although I have to say it does not matter two hoots if it does. It just looks more professional if it does not!)
Let it rest for a few minutes, ………so it fully absorbs all the water and becomes an integral whole. This is not critical but allows enough time to……
…..rub any excess fat into your skin where it will be absorbed. There is no need to wash your hands after – the basis for most hand creams is coconut oil or lard. (Yes, lard! It amuses me that rendered animal fat is a major export from our local knacker man to the cosmetic industry).
Put loaf into the hot oven at least 220° for 60 minutes Set a timer or you will forget! I always do!

I do not think the temperature is too critical - but it must be hot enough to turn the water in the loaf into steam because this is what rises it. I cook on a wood fired stove and the oven temp is tricky to be precise with. That does not seem to matter so long as it is hot! Indeed, I like the flavour of a slightly scorched crust. Alternatively, when the dough is made, fashion it into a rolling pin shape. Then cut into 12 discs. That make 12 buns that cook perfectly.

Wipe out the mixing bowl with a paper towel. This cleaning method is quick and easy. The slightly greasy surface which remains will be ideal for the next loaf. The point here is that fat cannot be fermented by bacteria or yeast and does not need washing off mixing and cooking utensils. My frying pan has not been washed for over 60 years. I know this because my mother never washed it either.
When the timer goes off, take loaf out of oven, tip out and allow to cool on a wire rack.

Once cool keep in a plastic bag in the fridge.

It lasts a week kept like this. Freezes well too.

Best used sliced thinly with narrow bladed serrated knife.

Cookery Classes

Belinda Kassapian ("beinthekitchen") offers excellent cookery classes, either online or in workshops. See "beinthekitchen" '

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