This Quinoa Bread has a chewy texture and nutty flavour reminiscent of rye bread and is perfect for making toast. It's vegan, gluten-free, no-knead, yeast-free, free from sugar, oil-free and nut-free!
200g(2cups)oats ** (ensure gluten-free if necessary)
2heaped teaspoonsbaking powder(ensure gluten-free if necessary)
¼teaspoonbicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
¼teaspoonsalt to taste
350ml(1 ½cups)water
1tablespoonapple cider vinegar*** (ensure gluten-free if necessary)
To decorate (optional):
Mixed seeds
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit).
Place the quinoa in a blender or food processor and whizz until you get a fine powder.
Transfer into a large bowl.
Place the oats in the blender or food processor and whizz until you get a fine powder.
Add to the bowl.
Add the baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt and mix well.
Add the water and vinegar and mix again.
Transfer the mixture to a loaf tin (I used a one-pound loaf tin) lined with greased baking paper.
Scatter over seeds to decorate, if desired.
Bake in the oven for around 30 minutes, until risen slightly and an inserted skewer comes out clean.
Leave to cool on a wire rack before putting away to store.
Keeps well in the fridge for up to a few days. If not eaten on the day it’s made, it’s best toasted before eating.
Video
Notes
*If you want to use quinoa flour instead of making your own, you can use 200 g (1 ⅔ cup) quinoa flour.**If you want to use oat flour instead of making your own, you can use 200 g (1 ⅔ cups) oat flour.***You can replace the apple cider vinegar with lemon juice.
I tested this recipe with many different combinations of flours in different ratios. Using quinoa flour alone wasn't enough as the bread turned out dry and crumbly. I found that a half-half mixture of quinoa and oat flour was the best. This is because quinoa flour can be quite crumbly, but oat flour tends to be sticky. So, oat flour works as the perfect binding agent for quinoa flour in this recipe.
I recommend white quinoa over tricolour quinoa, as the grains have a thinner skin meaning they're much easier to whizz into a powder. Plus, the white quinoa has a better colour for this bread.
Although I usually recommend washing quinoa first before cooking it, for this recipe I found it was better not to wash it because it doesn’t blend into a flour as well when it’s wet.
I recommend using a blender not a food processor if possible, as it takes much longer in a food processor. Plus my food processor isn't completely well-sealed so the process ended up spraying quinoa flour all over my kitchen. However, if you don't have a high-speed blender, a food processor will work too.
Quinoa takes longer to blend into a powder than oats, so I recommend blending them separately for this reason. Otherwise, if you blend them together, the quinoa will be under-blended while the oats will be over-blended.
If you prefer a slightly sweeter bread, you can add 2 tablespoons of any sweetener of choice: maple syrup, agave syrup etc.
If you’ve kept your bread in the oven for the right amount of time and it’s still not done in the centre and the outside is becoming hard/burnt, then I would recommend covering it with a piece of baking paper to prevent the outside from becoming burnt, and and continuing to bake it until an inserted skewer comes out clean.
To freeze, slice it up and put the whole thing in the freezer. Then when you want to eat it, you can just pop the slices of bread in the toaster straight from frozen.