keto "baguettes"

Go back to this post on keto "baguettes." The "baguettes" below are the soda-bread variety.

Can you see where my oven's hot spots are?

A food-porn closeup (I put in a good bit of everything-bagel seasoning):

Given how skinny these "baguettes" are, they're technically close to a thin type of baguette called a flûte. Named after the instrument of course.

And here's a pic of the crumb, which looks pretty bready:

With only baking powder as the rising agent, the bread came out surprisingly well.* You're not supposed to cut the bread open while it's cooling because the resulting evaporation will dry out the rest of the loaf, but I couldn't help myself: thanks to the everything-bagel seasoning, the bread smelled good, and when I tasted it, I felt that the taste and mouth-feel together were legitimately bready. This is bread, folks. No egginess; no weird aftertaste; no "off" sensation. Is it a true baguette? Fuck, no. But is it a palatable bread substitute with which one can make sandwiches? I'd say yes. In fact, I'm wondering whether this bread, given how light it is, might finally be the answer to making decent keto burger buns. Strangely enough, this isn't a Joe Duff recipe; this is from a channel called Hungry Elephant. I might have to see what other keto breads come from this channel.

You see three unevenly sized loaves in the above pics. The recipe is for making two larger baguettes, but my baguette pan is a threefer, not a twofer.

And now to make a sandwich au salami. The nice thing about that sandwich is that the bread is the only part that's got carbs. Meat, cheese (optional), and butter: virtually no carbs at all. I'm ecstatic about how well this bake went. The bread looks ugly as hell, but it works. And I bet it'll be awesome when buttered up and pan-fried.

UPDATE 1: pan-fried:

Looks and tastes pretty legit, if a tad heavy once the bread cools down.

UPDATE 2: sandwich au salami:

The simplest version of sandwiches like the jambon beurre and the sandwich au salami include no cheese or consider it optional,** but I can't leave well enough alone.

UPDATE 3: some time has passed, and I think this bread is best eaten warm when it's flexible and still feels light. It also needs some oil (butter, mayo, olive oil, maybe cheese, etc.) to make it a bit moister, and that's true even for the "baguettes" that I didn't slice into while the loaves were hot. As the bread cools, the texture becomes denser and heavier, and the lack of gluten becomes more obvious. I'd still say it's an awesome keto bread, but I'm beginning to think the ideal way to serve this would be as thinly sliced medallions pan-fried in butter, maybe as the base for a keto crostini (which might be a good idea, come to think of it!). This might also make for a pretty good garlic bread.

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*Let me clarify: soda breads are a thing and have been for a long time (since at least the 1800s), so on that level, there's nothing "surprising" about baking powder working as a rising agent. But what's surprising, to me anyway, is how well the baking powder worked, in this case, with almond flour. This is one of the few keto-bread recipes I've seen that somehow gets the balance of reagents right in its recipe. I actually like this end product, and I have no trouble calling it bread. Will it ever dethrone regular wheat-flour bread in my mind? No. But it will satisfy deep cravings and do its duty as a conveyor of texture and flavor.

**When these sandwiches do include cheese, it's often a nice, room-temperature Brie that is very spreadable, both with and without the waxy rind (it's actually a mold). The cheese I'm using is a Comté, which is basically the French version of a Gruyère (which is Swiss).