Paleo Breads

There have been a lot of Paleo cookbooks coming out recently and I have picked up a couple of new ones that I like and one I didn't, (though it's not just a cookbook, it tells you how to eliminate sugar from your diet, which is really the Whole30 It Starts with Food - a terrific book).

There has been a lot of hype on the new cookbook - Against All Grain by Danielle Walker and, being in a baking mood, I chose three recipes to try from the Muffins, leaves and Morning Cakes section:

• World-Famous Sandwich Bread
• Banana Bread
• Currant Scones

The World Famous Sandwich Bread calls for one cup of cashew butter but an 8 oz. jar at my local grocery store cost $7.99 - that would make it a small, expensive loaf of bread.  I had 1-1/2 cups of raw, unsalted cashews in the freezer, so I decided to make my own cashew butter.  The recipes I found used the food processor to make the cashew butter, taking 10-15 minutes depending on the strength of your food processor.  I have a Nutri-Bullet and thinking it would probably work faster, I used that instead and it turns out it makes terrific cashew butter.

Cashew Butter Made in a Nutri-Bullet
(Makes 1 cup)

1-1/2 cups raw, unsalted cashews (I got them in the bulk food aisle of my local grocery store)

Place the cashews in the smaller cup of the Nutri-Bullet.

Blend for a couple of seconds until the cashews are finely chopped.

Continue to blend until the cashews turn into cashew butter - less than one minute - stopping to scrape the container down if needed.

A pet peeve of mine is when the pictures in a cookbook come out nothing like the finished product - even when you follow the recipe exactly.  In this case, the World-Famous Sandwich Bread recipe almost lived up to the picture.

My bread turned out darker coloured, but I think that might be the type of almond flour I use.

Next on the list was Banana Bread with it's optional add-ins of dairy-free chocolate chips, walnuts, dried cranberries or raisins.  I chose walnuts.  It turned out really well and you would not be able to tell the difference between "real" banana bread and Paleo Banana Bread.

I was serving sautéed mushrooms with bacon for breakfast, and the Currant Scones looked good so they were my third baked item.  One small problem, the recipe calls for Palm Shortening, which I don't have. 

I have found it locally (Consumers Nutrition in Richmond Centre carries it), but I only had coconut oil or ghee on hand, so the scones did not turn out quite as well as I hoped.  They were sweet (I will decrease the honey next time to one tablespoon rather than the 1/4 cup the recipe calls for.  Paleo Grandad thought they were delicious the way they were). 

I used coconut oil instead of the palm shortening, so the scone dough was quite sticky and I had to add a lot more coconut flour.  There was no way I could cut the dough out into rounds as the recipe says, so I just patted them into a round scone shape.  The finished product was really crumbly (again, too much coconut flour) when I tried to cut them in half but, with butter and a small teaspoon Paleo Raspberry Jam on top (picture at the top of this page) without cutting them apart worked better.

So, if you are thinking of getting your first Paleo cookbook (or another Paleo cookbook), I bet you will use this one.