I hope this isn't too redundant around here, but it took many experiments to get this right and it might help another baking-newbie out.

Makes a lovely textured bread, similar to those half and half we get in UK (half white, half wholemeal). At only 36g carbs for whole loaf, I'm really pleased with this!

Mon’s LC Bread Machine Loaf 1

160g (5.6oz) Vital Wheat Gluten
85g (3oz) Soya Flour *
45g (1.6 oz) Almond flour (finely ground almonds)
20g (.7 oz) Flax meal (finely ground flax seeds) **
10g (.35 oz) Bran
5g (.2 oz) whole Flax seeds
1 medium Egg
½ tsp Salt ***
2 tsp Sugar ****
1 tsp Splenda *****
1 ½ tsp Yeast (dry, rapid acting) ******
240ml (16 tbs) Water, lukewarm. *******

[Measurements are in British metric. I’ve included the ones in brackets as a guide, but please check with an online converter.]

Mix together all dry ingredients except yeast.
Beat egg with water, salt and sugars and add to your machine’s pan.
Add flour mix on top of water so it mostly floats.
Make a little dip/well on top and add yeast. (Basically, follow our machine’s instructions).

Machine process:
5 min warming.
3 min mix.
7 min knead. (I need to check it’s mixing well)
Soon as kneading is completed, I pat it down into a shape fitting the whole pan, as it's usually just a ball.
60-70 min rise. (Should approximately double in size)
35-45 min bake.

Nutrition per loaf (Fitday):
Carbs:36-37 Fat:61 Protein:187 Cals:942

Notes:

* Community brand (UK) – 16g carbs per 100g
** Linusit (UK) – 6g carbs per 100g
*** Best to use non-iodised. Too much salt will kill the yeast action.
**** The yeast ‘eats’ the sugar, so there’s no need to count these carbs at all! If you’re weary and use as much as I do, count half the carbs. But honestly, there’s no need to. I've not counted the sugar at all in the final nutritional value.
***** I find a little Splenda improves the flavour, making it closer to commercial wheat bread.
****** You can ‘proof’ (check) your yeast first if has less than a few months of shelf life left. Put into water and sugar and check it bubbles. Otherwise, dry yeast with a plenty of shelf life left won’t need this.
******* Adjust your water temp, making it a little warmer if you don’t have the warming option on your machine.

I managed 13 medium thick slices from this, coming to 2.7-3 carbs per slice. An electric slicer has been a worthwhile purchase for all this lc bread!

Finally, you can play around with the soya flour and flaxmeal quantities. More flaxmeal tends to make a bread closer to wholemeal. If you add quite a lot of flax meal, you might not need the egg.
If you're not so keen on soya flour, it works well half soya and half oat flour (finely ground oats).

I would try it but I can't have the gluten!

I use the egg white merengue type bread all the time but every now and then I really want to have a piece of real bread.

Commercial LC breads really arent all that Low Carb, and breads made from low carb bake mixes still have a pretty good carb count. But this recipe looks pretty good, and at 3 grams of carbs or less per slice, will probably wind up being made a couple times a month at least, lol.

I'll report back after I make it and try to provide some US measurements.

Hiya,

Yes, please do!

I've made 4 batches now, it's soooo yummy. of course everyone is different. Someone might say they taste the soya or something else. But for me, this is a really nice bread.

Watch your ingdients though, as mine are very low carbs to begin with. The soya flour I used previously was mich higher carb.

I've found it quite filling, all that protein and fat. So have sliced my new loaves much thinner and carb count is under 2.5g per slice.

Also, I've tweaked things and found that 210ml of water works better, as well as an increased rise time to 85mins - ymmv.

I havent gotten around to making it yet. I still have to go out and get some of the ingredients.

I havent had good experiances with soy flour in the past. Most things I make iwth it come out disgusting. I try to use almond flour or a bake mix like Carb Quik instead. But, supposedly if you can fid a toasted soy flour, it has much less of an aftertaste.

Also, speaking of carb-quik I bet instead of soy flour you could use the Carbalose Flour (what carb quik is made from). Not sure what the differance in carb count would be though. I'll have to look into that.

EDIT: Hmm, well 100 grams of Carbalose Flour has 19 grams of carbs. 100 grams of soy flour has about 10 grams, so it's almost double the carb count. It would still come out to under 5 grams of carbs per slice though if you slice it thin. But I will try it with soy first, since it's not entirely made of soy maybe it wont taste too bad, lol.

I've no idea. I tried to come up with a recipe that used raw ingredients, rather than mixes. but if you can tweak it to work for you, that's great.

I've heard a lot of people denounce soya, and perhaps this recipe will not be to some people's taste. they might taste the soya. I don't know.

I'm looking into modifying it so it's soya free as well. But I'm no expert so need to research what would work just as well. You could try oat flour, that does work, but does raise the carb count. Still LC, but definitely higher.

Just checked my Fitday. My oats work out to 57g carbs per 100g. That's significant considering my soya flour is only 16g carbs. But you could use half of each.

Let's see, using only oat flour would make a loaf that is roughly 71g carbs. About 4.5 per slice if 16 slices. Still very LC for bread.

Nica,

Wow that looks good! Turned out beautiful. Sure with I could make the recipe without the gluten. bummer

Instead of gluten, perhaps you could try an unflavored whey protein instead. It should still provide the stickiness needed to hold things together, and that's all the gluten is for anyway.

Doesn't the gluten help the bread rise as well?

We'll yes, because of the protein structure that forms when a gluten dough is kneaded. The protein structure is what traps the gas bubbles in place, allowing the dough to rise. Substituting another protein for the gluten should work (and be sure to knead it very good to get the protein structure to form). It may not rise as good as if you used gluten, but it should still be able to rise.

You could experiment with different protein sources as well. If Whey doesnt work well, or you just dont like whey, try things like soy protein isolate, casein protein, etc.

Great. Thanks for that explanation.

I'm totally happy with gluten myself, so will stick to that. Have you considered using oat flour in place of soya?

I have found that wheat protein isolate works the best.

Hi,

Don't think I've ever seen that readily available near me. How does it function differently to the gluten?

Sorry nica I did not notice that you were from the UK. Wheat protein comes in two major forms and I buy both of them online at either (www.netrition.com or http://store.honeyvillegrain.com/).
WPI 8000 (wheat protein isolate 8000) is mainly used to give breads chewiness and structure. It's similar to wheat gluten flour but has more protein and much less carbs. WPI 5000(wheat protein isolate 5000)-is mainly used to give breads more stretchiness/to help rising. Both of these are used in conjuction with other low carb flours such as Carbalose or Carbquik and resistant wheat starch.

If you click on the picture below you can see the entire recipe for buns that I made using this dough if you are interested.



I have several different recipes using this basic dough for bread, buns, pizza, stromboli, and cinnamon rolls.

This bread is EXCEPTIONALLY good! I was very dubious about trying it - I'm not a fan of soya flour, but it looked good and the directions were very well detailed, so I THOUGHT I'd give it a go. I'm so glad I did.
I have a cheap Cookworks breadmaker (which works really well for my own LC bread recipe) and I always remove the paddle before the knockback for two reasons. One, it leaves a smaller hole and two, more important, it suits LC bread not to have to rise twice. With no paddle, the thin metal 'pole' just whirrs around when it gets to the knockback stage - my machine is not sophisticated enough to leave out that stage altogether.
I was very surprised how high this bread rose - in fact, I had to call a halt early to the rising and begin the bake cycle after only 50 minutes. I was sure the bread would be full of holes (that has happened to me too often to count) but it had a perfect texture - light and springy.

I made only a few changes to the recipe:
1. It needed 270 mls of water for me - NOT Nica's tweaked 210 mls and not even the original 240 mls.
2. I always add a tablespoon of oil to the breadpan first - makes the paddle and later the loaf easier to remove.
3. I use 3 Splenda tablets, or the equivalent in Stevia, in all my breads - it helps the flavour IMO.
4. I use a cycle that has about 30 minutes in total of kneading - I think this really helps the gluten to develop (hence the 'high rise' effect, I suppose).

Thanks very much for the recipe, Nica. This bread had slices as large as a bought loaf with a great texture - ideal for sandwiches. I could still taste the LC 'whang', but it was nowhere near as obvious as many others I've tried (and dumped). I'll be making this one again - maybe I'll reduce the soy flour a bit, perhaps adding some Carbalose?

Babs