Fat Bread

Bread is a difficult thing to replicate on a keto diet. There are eggy breads, flaxy breads, coconut flour breads, etc. And let's face it, you're never going to be able to make a keto-friendly bread that lives up to the gluten-y standards of a carb-rich slice of white bread, but you can still make a tasty substitute. This Fat Bread is (in my opinion) one of those substitutes.

Notice I call it a substitute and not a replacement. This doesn't really taste like bread, or have the same fluffiness. But it makes a great substitute with its slightly nutty flavor and spongy but dense texture. It also grills really well without any extra butter, since its basically made of fat. Grilled cheese and ham heaven.

As for the downsides, I found that although it held it's shape pretty well, once I got down to those last bites of my sandwich it would start to crumble apart. A small price to pay. And depending on what you pair it with, the nuttiness might be overwhelming. All depends on your personal tastes.

I found this recipe on the Free the Animal blog. Mr. Nikoley has gone through all the hard work of experimenting to find a combination of nuts and eggs that works well enough to approximate bread, and I thank him for it! You should check out his post - it's got a lot more information about his process.

I've included a text version of this recipe for those who enjoy copy/pasting and an image version for those who like pictures. The image-recipe has a more detailed nutrition breakdown of the individual ingredients. And for those who are into micronutrients, I have a detailed breakdown here.

Per serving (1/20 of the recipe, or 1 slice): 147 calories, 3.2 g carbs, 2.0 g fiber, 1.2 g net carbs, 14.6 g fat, 2.7 g protein

Ingredients

• 5 eggs
• 1 cup raw macadamia nuts
• 1 cup coconut butter *
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 Tbsp lime or lemon juice
• 1 1/2 tsp baking soda

*or make your own coconut butter using 2 cups of shredded dried unsweetened coconut and 4 Tbsp coconut oil, further instructions below the recipe

Instructions

1. Preheat your oven to oven to 350F / 175C and grease a bread pan (I actually did not grease my pan and had zero problems with sticking).


2. In a food processor, process the 1 cup of macadamia nuts into a slightly chunky nut butter. 


3. With the processor still on high, drop in 1 egg and wait 20 seconds to let it incorporate nicely. Drop in another egg and wait 20 seconds. Now you can just drop all 3 remaining eggs in. Mix until it’s nice and smooth.


4. Add the 1 cup of coconut butter and 1/2 tsp salt. Give that a quick mix.


5. Finally, with the food processor on low, first add the 2 Tbsp lemon or lime juice followed by 1 1/2 tsp baking soda. Let it spin for a few more seconds and then pour the batter into your bread pan.


6. Pop it into your 350F / 175C oven and let it bake for about 35 minutes.


7. After it’s finished cooking, let it sit and cool down. Then you can pop it out of the pan and have a tasty slice of whole-fat bread. I cut my loaf into 20  1 cm slices.

* Coconut Butter: Using a food processor, process about 2 cups of shredded dried unsweetened coconut until it becomes nut-buttery. It will take about 15 minutes of food processing to get to this point. And you will probably need to add some coconut oil along the way to reconstitute some of the moisture lost to the coconut drying process. My food processor was not able to fully butter-ize the mixture, but my semi-butter worked well enough in the Fat Bread recipe.