Embarking on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) – Let’s start with making bread!
Embarking on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) – Let’s start with making bread!
For those of you who have never heard of the Specific Carbohydrate diet, it is a wonderful food plan designed to support people with severe digestive problems. It is a way of eating which removes certain starchy carbohydrates which are believed to be harmful for an individual with a compromised digestion. People suffering with allergies, asthma, hayfever and mental health problems can also benefit hugely from the SCD. So you may be asking yourself, why I am embarking on this diet? The answer is in my previous blog!
One of the first challenges I faced was, “what do I replace bread with?”. On the SCD, wheat and gluten must be avoided. I am married to a wonderful man who loves his bread! We tend to buy the best bread you can from the supermarket. I believe ‘Cranks Organic Wholemeal Bread’ is the best. The joy of this bread is that firstly, and most importantly, it is delicious. Secondly, the ingredients are simple and unprocessed and finally, it is cooked in an old fashioned way – what more could you want. It is delicious toasted with a couple of soft boiled eggs!
For many of us, myself included, bread is a staple food. We regular eat it at breakfast with a couple of eggs, at lunchtime with a bowl of homemade soup and in the evening with some pate. We have always been careful not to eat it more than once a day because I believe it is important to eat a good variety of foods.
To my joy, I discovered the wonderful gluten-free bread recipe in Elaine Gottschall’s, ‘Breaking the Vicious Cycle’. It is delicious and incredibly easy to make. I am now in the habit of making about three loaves at once. Once made, I slice up the bread and pop it in the freeze. I am then able to take, slice at a time, out of the freezer. This way it tastes as good as fresh! Another tip is that I buy my nuts in bulk from either Tesco’s or an Asian shop. Here they tend to produce bigger bags for less money. Sadly they are not organic nuts. For a savoury loaf, I tend to use almonds because the skin gives the bread a lovely wholemeal brown look.
So here is the recipe I use:-
Makes a 1lb loaf of bread
2 ½ cups ground almonds
¼ cup yoghurt (homemade if possible)
½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
Pinch of salt
4 eggs
You will need a blender or food processor plus a 1 x 1lb bread loaf tin. If you only have a 2lb loaf tin, I suggest that you double this recipe.
- Preheat your oven to 190°C (375°F)
- Butter and line your loaf tin with baking paper
- Grind your nuts, measure them in a cup and put them into a clean bowl
- Place the yoghurt, bicarbonate of soda, salt and eggs into the processor and whizz.
- Add the ground almonds and whizz again. You should have a batter consistency.
- Pour this mixture into your prepared loaf tin
- Cook for 25 minutes. Test your bread by inserting a knife. Your knife should come out clean.
- Turn bread onto a wire rack and allow to cool.
Once your bread is cool, you can slice it and put it in the freezer.
Sweet bread
I tend to use cashew nuts to make my sweet bread’s because it gives them a beautiful rich yellow colour.
Firstly, to make banana bread, I use cashew nuts instead of almonds and simply add 2 very ripe mashed bananas to the yoghurt mixture.
To make honey bread, again I use cashew nuts and simply add between ¼ and ½ a cup of runny honey, according to your taste, to the yoghurt mixture. These are delicious sweet breads are a wonderful treat at teatime. My husband loves these as much as any cake.
Many thanks to Elaine Gottschall
