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Jofish's Atkins Bread, aka Jokins Bread

25 February 2004

So the problem with most Atkins Bread recipes I've seen on the internet is that the people who make them either don't understand the concept of low carbohydrate or don't understand bread. Now, I like making bread and giving it to my friends, and this was mainly developed so that I could give bread to my friend Janet.

I've been through about a dozen iterations on this bread, and I'm pleased with where it's gone. This is designed for a 2lb or 1 1/2lb bread machine, but will work perfectly well if worked by stand mixer or by hand.

1 cup soy flour
1 cup vital wheat gluten
1 cup brown flour (see below)
1/2 cup nut flour (I like pecan; more flavour than almond)
1/2 cup wheat bran
2 cups water (or liquid of your choice; I like 1 cup wine, 1 cup water)
2 tbsp dried yeast
2 tsps salt
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp black pepper (or as much as you're brave enough to use

If you're using a bread machine, put it on the whole wheat cycle. If you're not using a timer, you'll get even better results if you let your bread machine run through the first knead once (it'll take about 10-15 minutes depending on the model), reset the machine, and then start the wheat cycle all over again. If you're doing this by hand, you probably need at least ten more minutes of kneading (if not more) than normal recipes; figure three rises. If you're using a stand mixer, figure on another four or five minutes, depending on your mixer speed; figure two or three rises. This is all because of that cup of VWG: that's a lot of gluten and you'll need to break it down and spread it out. Bake as per your standard wheat recipe; figure 375F, 45 minutes.

Feel free to vary this recipe. You can try for the lowest-carb version by knocking out that brown flour and upping the other ingredients; if you really want to, kill that tbsp of honey. It's pretty good, but a bit heavy. The above version will give more of a rise and more flavour.

My math for this goes something like this:

soy flour: 5g/30g
vwg: 4g/30g
brown flour: 27g/30g
nut flour: 3g/30g
wheat bran: 1g/30g (it's all fiber.)

I figure that on this side, we're looking at something like a total of 40g/150g so we're talking about 30% carb. Cut out the brown flour, and let's say replace it with half a cup of VWG and soy and our 150g looks more like 20g/150g or 7% carb. That's a mighty fine level, and this doesn't contain any wierd ingredients that you don't recognise. And you get to eat fresh bread, not something that was mailed to you two days ago across the country.