Curb your carb cravings with these healthy keto bread recipes

Going on a keto diet can be difficult, especially if you love eating high-carb foods. But by making some healthy swaps, you can occasionally enjoy keto-friendly treats like keto bread.

How can you make bread keto-friendly?

The ketogenic diet is a low-carb, high-fat and moderate-protein eating plan. Going keto offers several health benefits, such as:

• Lowering blood pressure.
• Reducing your appetite.
• Reducing your blood sugar and insulin levels.
• Promoting weight loss.

The keto diet also has some cons, like “keto flu,” an exhausting transition period that often triggers intense cravings. Whether you’re suffering from keto flu or you just miss the taste of bread, you can try these recipes for keto bread with familiar carb-like flavors and textures that won’t undo your progress.

To make healthy keto bread, you need to swap certain ingredients and use keto-friendly foods.

Keto bread recipes replace traditional flour with fiber-rich and high-fat ingredients like almond flour, coconut flour, eggs, psyllium husk powder and healthy fats such as avocado oil or grass-fed butter. This keeps your total carb intake low so you stay in ketosis, the fat-burning state that is the goal of the keto diet.

Ingredient swaps also boost your intake of essential nutrients:

• Almond flour is rich in vitamin E and magnesium.
• Coconut flour and psyllium husk (used as a binder) are full of fiber, which helps balance your blood sugar and keeps your gut healthy.
• Eggs are rich in nutrients like biotin, choline and vitamin K2.

Combining these ingredients produces keto bread that’s almost as good as the real thing.

Hearty coconut flour seed bread

This bread recipe, which is full of delicious nuts and seeds, is from the cookbook “Easy Keto Breakfasts” by Carolyn Ketchum, a best-selling author and founder of All Day I Dream About Food, a popular keto blog.

A slice of this coconut flour seed bread contains only six grams of carbs, six grams of protein and four grams of fiber, which is 16 percent of the recommended daily intake (RDI). The recipe below makes 12 servings.

Ingredients: 

• 2/3 cup (73 g) coconut flour
• 1/2 cup hulled pumpkin seeds
• 1/4 cup avocado oil
• 1/4 to 1/2 warm water
• 2 tbsp psyllium husk powder
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1 tbsp hulled hemp or sesame seeds (for the top of the bread)
• 1 tbsp hulled sunflower seeds (for the top of the bread)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 5 large egg whites
• 3 large whole eggs

Preparation:

1. Preheat your oven to 350 F, then grease a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan.
2. Use a food processor or coffee grinder to process the pumpkin seeds. Grind until the seeds resemble fine crumbs.
3. Transfer the ground pumpkin seeds to a large bowl, then whisk in the coconut flour, baking powder, psyllium and salt.
4. Add the avocado oil, egg whites and whole eggs. Stir until well combined.
5. Stir in the 1/4 cup of the warm water until well combined. If your batter is stiff, add another 1/4 cup of water a tablespoon at a time. Your batter should be spreadable but not pourable.
6. Spread the batter in the loaf pan, then smooth the top. Sprinkle the seeds on the batter and press lightly until the seeds stick.
7. Bake for 45 to 50 minutes. The bread should turn golden brown on top and firm to the touch.
8. Remove the bread from the oven and let cool completely in the pan before serving.

Keto bread

This next recipe is from “Keto Made Easy,” a cookbook by Megha Barot and Matt Gaedke, the founders of Keto Connect, another popular blog. A slice of this keto bread only contains 2.4 g of carbs and 4.6 g of protein.

The stevia used in the recipe won’t make your bread sweet. The sweetener will only help the keto bread mimic the flavor of traditional wheat flour-based bread. The recipe below makes 16 servings.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups blanched almond flour
• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted (not hot)
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp pink Himalayan salt
• 1/4 tsp cream of tartar
• 6 large eggs
• 10 drops of liquid stevia

Preparation:

1. Preheat your oven to 375 F, then use a bit of coconut oil spray to grease an 8 x 4-inch loaf pan.
2. Separate the eggs. Combine the egg whites and cream of tartar in a large mixing bowl, then beat with a hand mixer on high speed until stiff peaks form.
3. Get another large mixing bowl then combine the almond flour, baking powder, egg yolks, melted butter, salt, stevia and one-third of the beaten egg whites. Use the hand mixer until the dough is thick and uniform.
4. Get a rubber spatula and fold in the remaining whipped egg whites in two parts.
5. Pour the batter into the greased loaf pan, then bake for 30 minutes. The bread must set in the center.
6. Test the center of the bread with a toothpick, which should come out clean.
7. Let the bread cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then remove and slice before serving.
8. Store any leftover bread in a Ziploc bag for at least five days. You can also freeze leftovers for about two weeks. Reheat the bread in the oven or toaster oven.

Make the switch to keto-friendly foods to give your body the nutritional boost it needs. Visit Ingredients.news for more keto-friendly options for your favorite recipes.

Sources include:

MindBodyGreen.com

Healthline.com