Several years ago while working at Microsoft, I came across one of those diet books (yawn), but this time it was written by a Product Manager for Microsoft Project. I thought what did a guy who writes software know about nutrition, so I had a look. The book was entitled – “The Calorie Myth: How to Eat More, Exercise Less, Lose Weight and Live Better.” by Jonathan Bailor. I read the entire book in a weekend, and it changed the way I think of food. The book focuses on the type of food you are eating and not just the calorie content. The diet contains no sugar or starch because starch is transformed into sugar by your body. Only foods with a low glycaemic index are allowed, and high-protein foods are encouraged, with low-fructose fruit thrown in for balance. It is similar to keto but not as militant.
But I MISSED BREAD almost every day, and I really missed sweet things like donuts and cake. It was hard especially at holidays. I can eat wheat and sugar, but I just chose not to. Unlike some unfortunate people who have a wheat intolerance and possibly have to watch their sugar because of diabetes.
Back to the holidays. My family had a favourite treat that only came around the Christmas holidays – cranberry bread. Cranberries are picked after the first light frost so are available starting in September until December. This bread was a “quick” bread based on baking powder and had sweet tart cranberries and creamy pecans and is best served with about a quarter inch of butter on the top. About 5 years ago I started to try and convert my mothers recipe to use alternative flours and sugar substitutes. Every year I would try again with a different nut flour and end up with a brick. Then I found chickpea flour and the loaf started to appear but with a nine iron divot in the middle where it had sunk due to the lack of gluten to hold the air bubbles. This continued until I tasted kefir – yuck, no wonder it is supposed to be good for you. The taste of kefir was like carbonated butter milk which clicked into the replacement for butter milk in my mom’s recipe and the new activator for the baking soda. A bit more tweaking and I had a very reasonable cranberry bread for the holidays. I then started to branch out using other fruits and vegetables with either pecans or walnuts and the results are the breads for sale on this site.