Day 17 - Old Country Buffet and Raw Bread

The Old Country Buffet is probably the last place you'd expect us to be eating, but I took the afternoon off work today to do just that with my grandma. They have a weekday soup & salad lunch special for $4.99 so it was perfect. I had a big salad from the well-stocked bar and good cantaloupe too. Thanks for lunch Nana!

In other news, we have real, functional, raw bread! And lots of it. We used Russell James' recipe from The Raw Chef:


BUCKWHEAT BREAD

Makes 18 slices

Ingredients:

-1/2c olive oil
-1 ½c sun dried tomatoes
-3c sprouted buckwheat (1 ½c dry & unsprouted)
-1 ½c flax meal
-3 ½c peeled zucchini, roughly chopped
-2c apple, cored and roughly chopped
-3T lemon juice
-2 avocados
-1 large onion
-½c minced parsley

Instructions:

1) Process the olive oil, sun dried toms, sprouted buckwheat, courgette, apple, lemon juice, avocados, onion and herbs until thoroughly mixed.

2) Transfer to a large bowl and mix with in the flax meal by hand. The reason you do this separately (not in the processor) is that you are likely to have too much mixture for the size of the processor at this point, and when you add the flax meal it will become quite heavy and sticky and overwork your machine.

3) When mixed, process the whole batter in the machine again, but in small batches to achieve a light fluffy texture.

4) Divide the mixture in half and place on Paraflexx sheets on dehydrator trays. Use a spatula to spread the mixture evenly to all 4 sides and corners of the Paraflexx sheet. If mixture is too sticky you can wet the spatula to make things easier. With a knife score the whole thing into 9 squares.

5) Dehydrate for 2 hours at 115 degrees and then remove the Paraflexx sheets by placing another dehydrator tray and mesh on top and invert so that your original sheet of bread is upside down. That will allow you to peel the Paralexx sheet off and continue to dehydrate the underside of the bread.

- Dehydrate for approx 8 hours more at 110 degrees, or until bread feels light in your hand. If the pieces don’t fully come apart where you scored, use a knife to cut them.

My notes:

-Buckwheat is very easy to sprout! Instructions here.

-The batter doesn't get "light and fluffy" after adding the flax meal. But our bread looks exactly like the picture from the raw chef, so I don't think we did anything wrong.

-I used two small apples and only half a large onion, I did not want onion taste left in my mouth after eating this stuff!

-It took us about 1 1/2 hours to prepare, but it was our first time and made two big tupperware containers full, so it was worth it.

The bread is thin, dense, and chewy with a slightly sweet taste. Definitely hearty enough for a sandwich and you can even scoop up salsa with it. We both like it and it's very satisfying for me, but Nathan says it's no replacement for cooked fluffy bread. I have to admit he is right, I couldn't see eating my egg and cheese sandwiches on this stuff after a night at the bar. But, a nice addition to our raw recipes.

Cheers,

Kelly