experimental keto bread, a riff off Victoria's

I made some significant changes to Victoria's Keto Bread (VKB) recipe (see here and here for those early results). When I transferred the recipe over to a Google Doc, I made sure to copy the recipe for Victoria's Perfected Keto Flour as well since VPKF is part of the recipe for her keto bread. VKB is basically a soda bread that starts off as a sludgy batter, then magically puffs up into an eggy, lumpy mass thanks to the baking powder. I had thought of a way to smooth the bread out via cling wrap and oil spray, but I never used it: I make this bread so infrequently. While I generally think the bread works for my purposes, at least for burger buns if not so much for hot dogs, I began to wonder what would happen if I futzed around with the recipe, changing the rising agent from baking powder to yeast while also making the bread a bit less eggy (as you'll see below, the original recipe calls for four eggs). Below, I've reprinted the original VPKF and VKB recipes, followed by the new, "experimental" recipes.

Victoria's Perfected Keto Flour (VPKF)

336 g almond flour
76 g oat fiber
50 g egg-white protein
18 g xanthan gum

Victoria's Keto Bread

210 g VPKF
1 cup warm water
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
4 eggs
sesame seeds
eggs for egg wash

And now for my changes:

Experimental Keto Flour (EKF)

300 g almond flour
112 g oat fiber
50 g vital wheat gluten
50 g egg-white protein
10 g xanthan gum

Experimental Keto Bread

300 g EKF
2 TB chia seeds or flaxseed powder
1 TB inulin
5 g active dry yeast
1/2 tsp salt
1 TB Everything Bagel seasoning
1 TB slow-absorbing Korean “sugar”
3/4 cups warm water (177 ml)
2 eggs
olive oil (to coat mixing bowl for dough proofing)

Compare the two flours, VPKF and EKF. Notice how my experimental flour includes a greater proportion of oat-fiber powder (which is as fine a dust as regular wheat flour—important for texture) as well as 50 g of vital wheat gluten. Lucky for me, I'm not gluten-intolerant, so using vital wheat gluten isn't a problem for me.* I added it to my experimental flour because I knew I'd be using yeast as a rising agent. Almond flour, by itself, has no gluten (and neither does oat flour), so yeast would be useless as a rising agent. Yeast works by eating sugar and producing gas bubbles. Within a gluten network, as with dough made from regular all-purpose flour, these gas bubbles get trapped and help the bread to rise and to create a spongy crumb.  With vital wheat gluten in the mix and with oat flour for better texture, I felt that this new, experimental bread flour might do the trick.

Now compare the bread recipes, and note how I radically reduced the number of eggs from 4 to 2 while adding chia seeds/flaxseed meal as a kind of low-carb, vegan-egg substitute. I also reduced the amount of water needed for this new yeast dough, from 1.5 cups to 0.75 cups (eggs already contain a lot of water, so 1.5 cups seemed way too high-hydration for my purposes). I also added (1) inulin (diabetic-friendly) for the yeast to eat while it bloomed in warm water, (2) Everything Bagel seasoning for a more flavorful dough, and (3) some slow-absorption "sugar" (a Korean product; scroll to the bottom of this post) to blunt any possible bitterness from the added oat fiber (not as bad as psyllium husk). 5 g of active dry yeast seemed to be just the right amount, and with the vital wheat gluten as part of the mix, I was assured of having a gluten network for the farting yeast to gas up with bubbles.

I didn't include the recipe instructions for either Victoria's original recipe or my new, experimental one, but as my bread-making readership knows, the basic difference between soda breads and yeast breads is that, with baking soda or baking powder as your leavening, you don't need any proofing time: just pour the batter into the baking vessel (if it's liquidy) or shape it and place it on the baking pan. With yeast breads, you often let the dough rise twice: once as a single, unified boule, then once again after splitting the boule up into smaller, individual breads. So this takes time. I didn't know how much time I would need (over-proofing is also a danger, by the way), so after mixing my dough in my stand mixer, I went with a boilerplate 2-hour first proof followed by a 1-hour second proof.**

I was really hoping for a huge aesthetic improvement. With Victoria's soda-bread batter, the bake would end up producing these lumpy creations (see previous links above). But with yeast bread, the dough would inflate from the inside, smoothing out any roughness as everything puffed up. During the bake, the dough's final "oven spring" would inflate the bread the rest of the way, resulting in a fairly smooth-looking final product.

I tried splitting the dough before baking, but my small knife wasn't very sharp. Should've used scissors.

A note about the above photo: when I'd put the dough into the silicone hot-dog molds for the second rise, the dough was at the level of the top of the mold. As you see above, after the second proof, the dough had risen well above the mold. This gave me hope.

burger buns on parchment paper to keep the dough from sinking through the silicone's vent holes

hot-dog buns, out of the oven

a closer look: not bad, color-wise, but somewhat brown on the bottom

burger buns: a disappointing oven spring despite being made from the same dough as the dog buns

a bit suntanned on the bottom, as was true with the dog buns

a plausibly bready crumb

here, too (and I see the crumb is uneven)

the build begins: 2 burgers, 1 pulled pork (Edam cheese), all with dill pickles

just before microwaving to melt the cheese

I forgot to add the leftover ham. To the four à micro-ondes!

I guess this will have to do as a final photo. I didn't melt the cheese that well (medium heat, 30 seconds).

As a first run, I think the bread proved to be... not bad. But there will need to be improvements, mainly to the prepping and baking procedures. The resulting product was a little too hard and overbaked, resulting in bread that felt, frustratingly, dense and heavy—the very result I was trying to avoid. I think the multipronged solution is to (1) mix the dough in my stand mixer for only half the time (2.5 minutes instead of 5... I probably overworked the gluten), (2) lower the baking temperate from 177ºC/350ºF to 160ºC/320ºF, and (3) shorten the baking time from 25 minutes to, oh, 18 minutes (at a guess) so as to avoid overcooked bottoms and generally over-baked bread.

I had hoped that this batch would be as springy and spongy as regular bread, but it wasn't. I think I've got the ingredient proportions dialed in, but if bread-savvy readers like Charles or anyone else care to suggest different ingredients or proportions, I'm all ears.

With the current batch of bread being as dense as it is, though, I can cut the remaining bread up into cubes and make keto croutons, or I can prepare my Moroccan-inspired spice oil and fry the bread in that for a toasty keto meal. (I could go further and prep "gyro sandwiches" with the Moroccan-fried bread—beef/lamb, lettuce, olives, tomatoes, and feta). And given how dense this current batch was, I could shape the dough into keto bagels. With the keto croutons, I could sprinkle them on salads, make low-carb bread pudding, or even make stuffing. So even with this current, "failed" batch, I can make something worth eating. For subsequent batches, though, I'll implement my stated improvements and see whether the bread ends up being better. I suspect that most of the problem comes down to baking time.

Verdict? Overall, the experimental dough is an improvement in ways that matter, e.g., look and taste. The yeast, with its gaseous inflation of the dough, smooths out the roughness found in the original soda-bread batter. The new dough is certainly less eggy, and despite how this experiment went awry, I can see how this dough might be good for certain applications, like croutons and Moroccan-inspired fried bread. That said, I need to tweak the prep and bake, working the dough less when mixing it, then baking it for significantly less time to avoid both suntanned bottoms and a tough texture. (Don't be fooled, though: the term "tough," in this case, is relative. My dough isn't as horrifyingly rubbery and bad-tasting as that Keto King recipe I'd tried long ago.) I think the second batch will be a winner. Meanwhile, feel free to offer your suggestions.***

__________

*Gluten is a proteinaceous substance, very low in carbs (only 18% of the carbs in regular all-purpose flour), and vital wheat gluten is what's left over from bread flour after you wash out all of the starch, leaving you with a weird, sticky mass that, when kneaded, starts to acquire the uncanny texture of muscle. This gluten, which I began working with in 2018, is the primary ingredient in seitan, a.k.a., "wheat meat," a vegan meat substitute.

**Some trivia about the word proof. In bread-making, the term can mean different things. Some YouTube bakers will say that they proof (bloom) their yeast to see that it's alive: the gas bubbles in the water, as the yeast eats the sugar, is proof of life. For others, proof (noun or verb) refers to the phase in which the made dough is allowed to rise, to develop the gas bubbles inside that lead to the bread's bubbly, networked crumb. Varying proof times can vary texture. In the UK, the verb used is to prove, not to proof, but the noun form is still proof. (For more info, see the definition here, verb, definition 5.)

***I also have some earlier attempts at bread that were partial successes. I need to revisit those, tweak them, and try them again.