What is my most favorite food in the whole world? Sourdough bread. What have I not had for the last 15 years since I found I was gluten intolerant? Sourdough bread. Ah for the love of bread! There is nothing like a chunk of fresh hot bread slathered with real butter. Yum! But alas the damage to my gut lining was not worth such heavenly delight. So I stopped eating gluten in any of its forms, and there are a lot of forms.
About a year after I gave up gluten, I created a gluten-free bread to simulate what I was missing. This was my Dr Dave Miracle Bread mix which I sold in the office for many years along with the many flavor additives that would turn the bread into many different treats. But try as I might, I could not recreate that sourdough experience. My original bread recipe was based on the basic idea of making an Angel Food cake into bread. This was because I was also living a low-carb lifestyle (and still am). Producing an almost carb-free bread is what made the bread a miracle. There were other gluten-free types of bread on the market at that time, but they were made basically from rice flour and tapioca flour. These don’t work when you are trying to keep your carbs down. Well, many years have passed and Sacramento county increased its regulations on making home-based, food products to the point that I could no longer make my Miracle Bread for my patients.
In my original attempts to make an egg white bread, like angel food, I was trying to incorporate low-carb flours, like almond flour. The problem was this would immediately collapse the fluffy egg white meringue because of the high-fat content of any nut flour. Meringue and oils or fats just don’t play well together. Consequently, my bread had to become an egg white based quick bread that was more like zucchini bread than sourdough. It worked for many years, but when I stopped making it for patients, I stopped making it for myself.
Several months ago I watched a youtube video of someone making a pure egg white bread made with nothing other than whipped egg white. It looked great! I made some myself, and it was terrible. The taste was not great, but much worse was the texture. It felt fine in your hand, but when you chewed it and tried to swallow it, well, good luck. It was kind of dry and stuck to the back of my throat and refused to go down the hatch. Over the next couple of months, other people online played with the recipe to make the egg white bread more tolerable, and some progress was made. Flavor improvements were made by adding dried butter at the very end, along with dried egg yolk. I tried the new recipes and they did taste any better and the bread still got stuck in my throat. I started playing with the recipe using ingredients no one else had thought of. Well, after over a dozen attempts, I have finally come up with a workable version that may just be a substitute for my beloved sourdough.
What is my secret? First I tried several fibers and gums to try to hold more moisture in the bread. These worked to a point, but inevitably the loaves would collapse as they cooled. Several versions worked quite well in terms of taste and swallowing and I successfully overcame the collapsing issue the same way bakers do with angel food. By using an angel food cake pan, I discovered that when I cooled it upside down, it prevented it from collapsing. This was cool until I had to wash that pan. It took forever. When I tried using parchment paper to prevent this mess, the bread simply fell out of the pan and collapsed.
In a spasm of right-brained inspiration, I added collagen in with the egg white. The results were better. Next, I tried adding whey protein isolate. This also was better. Putting both together was the best yet. I thought I had cracked the code for making egg white bread. Then for some crazy reason, I added Greek yogurt to the mix along with nutritional yeast. These were mostly for flavor, but they pushed the final product into the realm that even normal people might actually like this bread. I could line my silicone bread pan with parchment paper and slip the bread out of the pan shortly after taking it out of the oven to keep the bread from sweating, and it did not collapse! Okay, so here is the recipe:
1 ½ cups water
½ cup whey isolate
½ cup Greek yogurt
¼ cup collagen
¼ cup allulose
1 Tbs nutritional yeast
1 ½ tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp glucomannan
1 tsp psyllium powder
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp stevia liquid
Mix in a mixer till dissolved then add
1 cup egg white powder
Mix till wet then beat on high till fluffy – stiff peaks
Stop and add
2 Tbs powdered butter
2 tsp powdered egg yolk
Beat on medium till blended
Pour/scrape into a bread pan
Bake at 350 for 30 minutes
Wow, that is a lot of ingredients! Each ingredient serves a purpose. The psyllium and glucomannan may not be essential, but they help with the texture of the bread. The butter powder and egg yolk powder are for flavor. Don’t bother trying to replace those with real butter or egg yolks as they will collapse your meringue. The allulose is not essential, but it is what gives the bread a nicely browned crust. Without it, the crust is sort of a sticky white. The Greek yogurt not only adds more protein, but it gives the bread that sourdough tang.
Why is it worth it to make this bread? Basically, it is all protein. One loaf of this bread has 160 grams of protein. That is as much protein as a pound and a half of beef steak. My original target for my Miracle bread was for older folks because of the high protein levels. The underlying cause of the majority of senior deaths is protein wasting in the body. As we age our digestive system does not break down proteins as well as when we are young. As a result, we need to eat protein like we are bodybuilders just to get enough protein into our bloodstream to keep our bodies working. Unfortunately, as folks age, they tend to eat less and less protein foods when in truth they need more and more. Without enough protein, it is just a question of which organ fails first — kidneys, heart, lungs, liver, whatever. Everything in your body is made of protein, even your bones. Without enough protein to constantly repair everything, something is going to develop a disease sufficient enough to take you out. I pictured older folks kicking back eating toast with jam (my sugar-free jam recipe of course) and getting all the protein they need to prevent muscle wasting as they age.
So there we have it, a true protein bread. It is perfect for a bread replacement on a keto or low-carb lifestyle. This is the optimal eating lifestyle if you are trying to stave off dementia or other brain issues. It is also the best way to nutritionally decrease inflammation in your body. A sugar-burning metabolism produces lots of free radicals that trigger inflammation inside the cells. This bread would also be ideal for someone trying to lose weight. The most basic protocol for losing weight is to simply eat lots of fiber foods and a sufficient amount of protein, like 80 to 90 grams of protein a day. Stay away from carbs and fats and eat lots of low-carb veggies, salads, and lean proteins.
Let me know if you are successful in playing with this bread recipe. What other interesting things can you think of to make it even more delicious?
Take care,
David