Believe it or not, making your own bread doesn’t have to mean hours in the kitchen covered in flour. This soda bread recipe – which uses bicarbonate of soda rather than yeast – allows you to whip up delicious home-made bread quickly, and give your gut health a massive boost in the process.
“Soda bread lends itself beautifully to healthy loaves that are full of nutrition,” says nutritionist Reece Carter. “This recipe contains green banana flour and oats for a hit of resistant starch, which is a prebiotic that our gut bacteria just love. There’s also wholegrain flour, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds for an additional dose of dietary fibre.”
This recipe makes one loaf, giving you around 10-12 thick slices. To make the most of each slice, top with ricotta, figs and honey, or avocado, radish, micro-greens and chilli flakes (good luck choosing between the two).
Ingredients
3 cups wholemeal flour (or ground oats)
½ cup green banana flour
½ cup rolled oats
1½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
Pinch sea salt
Handful pumpkin seeds/pepitas
Handful sunflower seeds
400ml buttermilk
2 large eggs, whisked
1½ tb honey
Method
- Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celsius, and grease a loaf tin with a little extra virgin olive oil.
- In a large bowl, combine dry ingredients – the flours, oats, bicarbonate of soda, sea salt and the seeds – and combine well.
- Whisk buttermilk, eggs and honey together in a separate bowl.
- Create a well in the dry ingredients, pour in the buttermilk mix, and mix with a wooden spoon.
- Once well combined, use clean, damp hands to shape the mix into a ball (it won’t hold quite as well as regular bread dough, so be careful) and transfer to the loaf tin.
- Take a sharp knife and score 3-4 deep cuts along the top, an inch or two apart from one another.
- Dust with a little extra flour, and bake for 45-50 minutes or until a golden crust has formed, that sounds hollow when tapped.
- Leave the bread to cool slightly, then turn out of the tin on to a wire rack. It can be eaten immediately, or sliced up and stored in the freezer until you need it.
Enjoy! Your gut will ☺
