I've baked a lot of low carb breads. most of them failures..often the texture is akin to melted plastic or sponge, but this one was really good and I'll make it again.

I found a recipe from mhampton on how to make the bread only did not have the exact ingrediants that this person did, but it came out really good. I need to know how I can figure our how many carbs there are in the loaf.
Here is my verson of the recipe. I used what I had on hand.
3/4 cup warm water
1 TBSP butter
1 tsp sugar
1 egg

3/4 cup vital gluten
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup wheat germ
1/2 cup soy flour
2 packages sweet-N-low
1/4 tsp salt
2 1/4 tsp yeast

I did not use a bread machine I used my kitchen aid mixer. Let it kneed the dough for about 5 min. I let it rise for about 1 hour till it came to the top of the bread pan. Then baked it at 350 degrees for 30 minuites in bread pan sprayed with oil. It had a good taste but was a little on the dry side. Maybe the wheat germ caused that.
I would appreciate the help. I am still new to the low carb diet, but have caught on very well it is easier than low fat.
I use the Carbohydrate Addict's Lifespan Program and I like it better than Atkins. I started out with that.

Thanks in advance.

Use this chart (open in NotePad, not Wordpad):http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthre...threadid=110702

Using this info, plus these additional specs (WholeWheat flour, per quarter cup: 0.5g fat, 18g carbs, 3g fiber, 4g protein; defatted Wheat Germ, per quarter cup: 0g fat, 11g carbs, 3g fiber, 6g protein), I get 83g Net Carbs for your loaf.

Post #3

Azraelle
Thanks for the quick answer. When I make it next time I will leave out the wheat germ and that will lower the carbs even more, and maybe make it less dry. Try the recipe yourself and let me know what you think.

I have made variations of the recipe below 4 times with a bread machine, and this last time with letting the dough rise in a loaf pan and baked in a regular oven (to see whether just one rise would make for a better loaf because of the high gluten content)--they all come out quite crusty but very good nonetheless, from no less critics than my teenage son and daughter, who are not into low carb eating at all. The loaves look awful, but are nice and spongy inside.

Preheat the bread machine pan with hot tap water.

In a separate container, measure ~4-1/2 Cups dry ingredients* and mix well.

*My latest try used the following mixture--it isn't too picky as long as you use at least 1-1/4 Cups "vital wheat gluten flour" (the stuff that is ~70% protein), and no more than 1/2 cup soy flour (otherwise it tastes awful, so I've read):

2 TBSP dry Buttermilk
~250mg Vitamin C tablet, crushed
2 pkts Stevia (~1 tsp)
1/2 Cup Flax Seed Meal
1 Cup Oat Bran
1/2 Cup Whey Powder
1/2 Cup Soy Flour
1-1/2 Cup vital wheat gluten flour
1/2 Cup Rolled Oats

Measure out 1-1/4 cups hot tap water (I have a digital thermometer from my truck driving days) ~115-120 degrees F.
Add one Large or XLG egg (equiv to ~1/4cup), 2 TBSP oil (I use Peanut Oil most of the time), ~1 tsp lecithin, and 2 TBSP Blackstrap molasses in that order (the sticky lecithin and molasses just flow off the Tablespoon if used for the oil first). Mix real well with fork. Liquid temp should be about 95-99 deg F by now. Pour this into the bread machine pan.
Add the dry ingredients all at once. Add 1-1/2 tsp salt near one side. Poke a hole in the dry mixture on the other side, and add 3 tsp (or 1 TBSP) Active Dry Yeast (I used Red Star--not the special bread machine yeast).

Let the machine knead it, then extract the dough ball and shape into a loaf in a regular loaf pan, COVER with warm damp wash cloth, and let rise ~70 min in a warm oven (or other place free from drafts). Bake at 350-375 degrees for about an hour.

Or let the bread machine do its stuff. Since my bread machine's whole wheat cycle has never worked, I use the french bread cycle instead. This last time I did notice that there seemed to be more bulk to the loaf by pulling out the dough from the bread machine after the first kneading, and letting it rise in a loaf pan inside my warm oven, but even letting the machine do the normal cycles of 2 rises results in a spongy texture with lots of holes--its just that I only get about 10 very heavy slices. Simply judging it on the net carbs per slice seems to be a misleading oversimplification of what the body apparently does with bread with this much fiber--even 2 or 3 heavy slices have not been enough to knock me out of ketosis, and my carbohydrate threshold is only ~50g. This makes the equivalent of a 2 lb loaf.
Net Carbs/Loaf=138; 13.8/slice.
Fiber=44g; 4.4g fiber/slice.
Protein=226g; 22.6g/slice.
Fat=95g; 9.5g/slice
I will be trying it next with just 1 TBSP molasses (primarily because that's about what I have left), and 1/2 Cup Rice Bran (if I can find some), and reducing the oat bran down to 1/2 Cup.

mhampton,

I'm quite anxious to try your recipe, and I don't have a bread machine, and have never actually baked "real" bread before, but I'm going to give it a try. I used to love watching my mother bake bread, so at least I've SEEN it done. lol

As a complete newbie in bread making, I have a couple questions for you (or anyone else with the experience)

1. regarding the water temp between 110-100F: how long does it need to stay at this temp? Does it just need to be at this temp when the yeast is added, ot maintained at this temp while the yeast is "testing", as you say (I have no clue what that means, but I think I understand what is meant).

2. this one I guess is more for the "manual" brute force bread makers -- I remember my mother would kneed the bread, let it rise, then do another kneeding, and let it rise a second time, before popping it into the oven. What I'm reading here is to kneed once, let rise, then put it in the oven. What are the effects of kneeding once as opposed to twice?

Thanks in advance for the help (and any other tips would be helpful). I plan to gather the ingredients tomorrow evening from the local Whole Foods store, and am hoping to have fresh bread for breakfast on Tuesday!

My bread machine (Sunbeam/Oster 1-1/2lb Model #5890) cost me just $35 at WalMart. At that price, just about anyone can afford one--it doesn't make sense to put up with making it by hand, especially since doing it by hand ties up your kitchen (and you) for about 2-3 hours, whereas with a bread machine you lose maybe 20 minutes tops, then forget it and go do something else.

That said, for Q-1, I would suppose that if you made it in a bowl using a mixer or fork to get the ingredients mixed b4 turning out onto the counter to knead; If you pre-mix the liquid ingredients, and the dry ingredients, including the salt but minus the yeast, then pour in the liquid, then the dry, poke a hole for the yeast, then quickly mix it up, THEN the water temperature would be sufficient to get the yeast working.

Q-2: Mixtures with high gluten content, apparently, rise best if only one knead/rise cycle is performed. I wonder if the so-called "quick bread" cycle on the typical late model bread machines would work for this?? My bread machine's instruction manual is permanently lost, so it is of no help!

LOL, ok so it didn't go too well on my first attempt.

I ended up with a 1 1/2 inch high loaf! Although it was flat and dense, it was still tasty, but I'm afraid there's not much one can do with such a flat loaf.

Here's what I did -- please, someone, tell me what I did wrong!

I measured out 3/4 cup of cold water (it was as cold as I could get it from the tap, but with the warm weather it certainly wasn't freezing cold) in a pyrex measuring cup (2 cup capacity), put in 1 tbsp of butter and EXACTLY 1 1/2 tsp of sugar as directed. I heated it in the microwave until it was approximately 100-110 degrees (I had to use an analog meat thermometer which had a minimum scale reading of 140 deg, so I estimated where 110 deg would be on the scale, and shot for that). I then put the fast-rising yeast in the water/butter/sugar mixture, stirred it up well, and set it on the stove. The oven was on, so the top surface of the stove was warm enough to keep the mixture hot while the yeast "tested".

Meanwhile, I mixed up the dry ingredients (I used exactly the ingredients and portions listed in mhampton's recipe).

The yeast mixture was nicely frothed/bubbled (it had a "head" on it about 1 inch think) after I was done mixing up the dry ingredients. So I poured the yeast mixture into a stainless steal bowl, and then gradually worked in the dry ingredients, mixing with a wooden spoon. The resulting dough was rather sticky, yet sort of crumbly -- it didn't have the type of consistency I'm normally used to seeing with white bread dough.

I formed it into a "clump", put a dish towel over the bowl and let it rise for about 1 1/2 hours. The rise was not what I expected it would be -- I'd estimate the "clump" grew in size only 25% or so. For the first half hour, I had the bowl sitting atop the oven, which was actually quite warm -- perhaps too warm? The rise happened in the first hour, and then no change. So I then kneeded the dough -- it was still quite sticky, so I spread some oat flour on the table and kneeded it quite thoroughly. I then greased up a small loaf pan (pyrex) with butter, and put the dough into it, spreading it out to fill the pan. This resulted in about 2 inches or so of dough within the pan. I then let it rise again for about 1 hour. I'd estimate it rose about about an inch, perhaps less.

Then I put the bread in a 350 deg pre-heated oven for about 30 min, give or take a few. When I took it out, it had actually shrunk to about 1 1/2 inches high...

Clearly, I did something wrong. Any ideas???

This is just a guess, but it could be that your water was too hot and actually killed the yeast. It could look active and then "die" from too much heat.

Just to get an idea of what to expect: how much should you see the dough rise the first time?

The dough, when first made (using the ingredient amounts listed), if rolled into a ball, would be about the size of a large grapefruit. Should I expect to see it double in size?

After kneeding it, and placing it in the loaf pan, is it correct to let it rise again before putting into the oven (this I read in Joy of Cooking in the Yeast Breads chapter)? If so, should it rise the same amount the 2nd time? More? Less?

Thanks for all the help --

Coriolis, you should put it into the oven immediately after the first rise--don't knead it a second time. The only reason for "proofing" the yeast is to insure it is still alive. If your yeast has a "use before" date on it that is at least 6 months away, there is no need to proof it. Instead, start with water temp of 110-115 degrees, then mix the dry ingredients, including the yeast and sugar, together with the water, knead, then place in loaf pan in a warm, preferably enclosed, place FREE FROM DRAFTS. A gas oven with a pilot light works well for this. Or the top of a refrigerator near the back if the heat exchange coils are on the back. Lacking that, brush oil on top of dough, cover lightly with saran wrap, then with a piece of aluminum foil to reflect heat back onto the loaf, and stick it in your electric oven about 10 minutes after turning off the "warm" setting for 10 minutes.
If you are using mhampton's recipe you need to add more sugar, probably a total amount of something near to a Tablespoon (3 tsp), as Denver's 5500 ft altitude makes it MUCH easier for the yeast to rise with minimal amounts of sugar than at or near sea level (Massachusetts).

Thanks Azraelle!

My yeast has an expiry date of Jan 2005, so it should be fine.

But I want to be sure I'm following your instructions... are you saying NOT to mix the yeast and sugar with the water? If I understand you correctly, I should do the following:

Heat the water with butter to 110-115 deg. Put the water into the bowl. Then add ALL the dry ingredients (flours, gluten, salt, yeast and sugar) to the water.

Is that correct?

I'm hoping someone can answer these questions for me, as I said earlier, I'm a complete Newbie at making bread...

>> Should the yeast and sugar be added to the hot water/butter first, before mixing in the dry ingredients --OR -- should the yeast and sugar be mixed into the dry ingredients, then added to the hot water/butter mixture?

From what I've read in cook books, dry acting yeast should be added to water first, while fast-rising yeast should be added to the dry ingredients. I'll readily admit that this confuses me!

Also:

>> How can one be sure that ALL the sugar gets eaten by the yeast? If I use a tablespoon of sugar to get a better rise, how can I be sure that all the sugar will get eaten, and NOT increase the carb content of my bread?

Man, this is hard stuff, this bread making!

It shouldn't matter whether you mix the yeast with the water first or not--after all the bread machine does not mix the yeast first with the water. But if you DO mix the yeast first with the water, you MUST insure that the liquid temperature is no higher than 110 degrees. The only way I know to do this is with a digital thermometer, as the markings on a mercury thermometer, or a dial thermometer, can be off as much as 5-10 degrees. 120 degrees will kill the yeast. But if you start with ~115 degree liquid (without yeast mixed in) then mix all the dry ingredients, including the yeast, together with the liquid all at once, the dry ingredients will moderate down the temperature to a point where the yeast will happily go to work on the starches in the flour, as well as the sugar. As to whether the sugar is used up or not, the carbs that a teaspoon of sugar adds (4.2g, acc to Atkins carb counter) is a negligable amount compared to the carbs contributed by everything else, so why worry about it? Even if the yeast doesn't eat ANY of the tablespoon of sugar, this only adds another 12.6g to the loaf, which is less than 1g per slice, if you actually get 15 slices, as mhampton implies.
If the yeast consumes all of the sugar at 5500 ft, and more sugar is needed to get a decent rise at 500 ft, you can safely assume that the yeast will gobble that up too. Again, don't worry about it--don't strain at the gnat and swallow the camel, so to speak.

Hehe, it's the scientist in me that causes that... bread making is an exact science, dammit!

Thanks for the help!