You betcha! Most low carb breads are not soft and chewy. These’re chewy! Just not that soft. Your Hero Breads are but they have access to ingredients consumers don’t, like resistant wheat starch. But we do have access to King Arthur’s latest flour, Keto Wheat Baking Flour (keto is a buzzword used to sell things and we’re not into the unhealthy keto diet; we’re focusing on low carb foods for people with pre-diabetes and diabetes).

We got this recipe from the King Arthur site, did it and were not happy with the results. It did not rise as expected and was very, very heavy. So, we added a bit more water, and bloomed the yeast, and it turned out much better, adding only 4 carbs to the recipe.

Version 1 — Plain

Ingredients

• 3 ½  cups (420g) King Arthur Keto Wheat Flour
• 1 ¼  cups (300g) water, lukewarm (¼ will be used to bloom the yeast)
• 1 ¼  teaspoons (8g) salt
• 2 tablespoons (28g) butter, softened

For blooming the yeast

• 1 teaspoon honey
• 1 ½  teaspoons instant yeast or active dry yeast
• ¼ cup (60g) lukewarm water.

Directions

First Bloom the yeast: 1 tsp of honey, ¼ cup warm (110°F – 120°F) water, 1 ½ tsp yeast, and mix well. Let sit for ten minutes.

How to Bloom Yeast: put your teaspoon of honey (sugar can be used too) in a good sized soup bowl, pour in a quarter cup of lukewarm water and stir. Then sprinkle the yeast over the water and wait one minute, and then stir it in. Then just wait 10 more minutes.

Now we use our mixer. Make sure you have a bread hook or something comparable.

1. Weigh your flour; or measure it by gently spooning it into a cup, then sweeping off any excess. Combine all of the ingredients in a medium bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer.
2. Add the water first, then the warmed butter, and then the bloomed yeast. Then pour in the flour. Mix and then knead the dough until it’s smooth and bouncy; this will take 5 to 6 minutes on medium-low speed of a stand mixer.
3. Lightly grease a 9” x 5” loaf pan.
4. Wet your hands when you pull the dough out of your mixing bowl and knead it just a bit in your hands. Shape the dough into a 9” log and place it into the prepared pan. Cover the pan loosely with a lightly greased piece of plastic wrap or a reusable cover.
5. Let the bread rise for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, until it crowns about 1” over the rim of the pan.
6. Toward the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 350°F.
7. Bake the bread for 30 to 35 minutes, until it’s golden brown; a digital thermometer inserted into the center of the loaf will read 190°F.
8. Remove the bread from the oven, turn it out onto a rack, and allow it to cool completely before slicing.
9. Store leftover bread, well wrapped, for several days at room temperature; freeze for longer storage.

Proofing & Baking Notes:

They say that there are no mistakes as long as you learn from them. Well, I must be the smartest baker in the world I’ve made so damn many mistakes with this flour.

Yeast uses the starch in flour to do it’s thing. Thus, we can proof this flour just once, and that’s done inside the baking pan. And the time it takes can be variable. I pour boiling water into a pan at the bottom of the stove and proof the dough in there on the top shelf. I’ve been paying attention and learned something important:

The time for this proofing is 1 ½  to 2 hours. I watched the dough rise and then I watched it fall.

So you have to check in on the dough while it’s rising and pull it out (to preheat the oven) just when it crowns.

The last time (for me) the dough rose to crown an inch over rim of the pan at the hour and 25 minute mark. The time before that was at the hour and 35 minute mark. So, keep your eye on the dough.

Version Two — Nutty, High Fiber, Seeds

Ingredients (same as above but this time). . .

• 1 ½  cups (360g) water, lukewarm

Everything else is the same, but this time we add:

• ¼ cup rolled oats
• ¼ cup pumpkin seeds
• ¼ cup sunflower seeds
• ¼ cup flax
• ¼ cup chia
• ¼ cup hemp hearts

You’ll want to chop up the pumpkin and sunflower seeds. I have a tiny food processor for that.

Everything else is the same.

I don’t worry about the added carbs in this mixture above because of the high amounts of protein and flax we’re adding.