South African Seed Bread - Bread for a Diabetic Diet.

As a type 2 diabetic I can't eat white bread without my blood glucose levels soaring. Wholemeal bread is a little better but not a lot, so, I was very excited to discover the recipe for South African Seed Bread in Anthony Worrall Thompson's GI Diet Book.

The bread is extremely low GI due to the quite large amount of seeds in it. I adapted the recipe slightly as I only had sunflower seeds and linseeds,  the original recipe calls for both these seeds but also for pumpkin seeds and sesame seeds, so I just doubled the quantities of the two types of seed I had available. I don't usually include sugar or fat in my bread recipes so I also left out these two ingredients. I also had no wheat bran in so I just upped the amount of flour. The bread is quite a dense bread as you might expect,  but in my opinion, that is how a wholemeal bread should be. It has a delicious almost nutty flavour to it and the seeds give it an interesting texture, but best of all,  it doesn't cause my blood glucose level to spike.

It is super easy to make and requires no kneading so no excuse for not giving it a go!

My Adaptation of South African Seed Bread

Makes 2 Loaves.

700g Wholemeal Flour

2tsp Fast action dried yeast

100g Sunflower seeds

100g Linseeds (So long as you use 200g of seeds in total I don't suppose it matters too much which seeds you use.)

1 tsp salt

600ml hand hot water. (I use 1/2 and 1/2 boiling water and cold water mixed together and find the temperature about right)

Grease 2 900g loaf tins. Mix the flour, seeds, yeast and salt together in a bowl. Add the water and mix to a soft dough. Divide the mixture between two tins and leave to rise until the mixture reaches the top of the tins. Meanwhile preheat the oven to 200C / Gas Mark 6 and bake for approx 40 mins until nicely browned. To check they are cooked turn them out of the tins and tap the bottom of the loaf - it should sound hollow.

A note about rising - you do not have to have heat for bread to rise. It will rise faster in a warm place, but you can even rise your dough in the fridge if you give it long enough. I find a tip I was given years ago to place the dough in a clean plastic bin bag works well every time.