Eat Your Greens Loaf

Here's a strange idea. What if you could eat your greens inside your bread? Not as a sandwich: actually in the dough.

In today's experiment, I incorporated some healthy greens into my daily bread.

How did it go? What did my children think? And who would do such a thing anyway?!

Warning: This loaf contains cabbage.

It all started with some over-ripe peaches.

"Nicest peaches you'll ever taste!" insisted my green-grocer, loading them into my rucksack for free because otherwise he would have had to throw them away.

We both knew they were basically just bags of juice.

I put them straight into the blender with a banana and made smoothie. It was not the greatest. The peach skin made it bitter. People weren't exactly queueing up for seconds. I decided to use the remainder for bread.

"What about the cabbage?" I hear you eagerly cry.

Well, I saw the blender and the cabbage and, naturally, I thought 'green bread'. Who wouldn't?!

I blended the cabbage into the last of the smoothie (there was really hardly any smoothie left: I saved a whole large glass-full in case Mr P needed some, later) and made a lovely green liquid. This green liquid was used instead of water to mix up some bread dough. 

It looked quite green but not green enough. I poured in a generous amount of dried parsley. That was better. But now it smelled bitter. What to do about the flavour? I decided to add something sweet and happened upon date syrup among my supplies. In went a few tablespoons of that. Now the dough looked more red than green. At least it might taste nice.

I added a few tablespoons of flaxseeds, too, for good measure. This bread was going to be really healthy!

The loaf baked up beautifully and rose nicely in the oven. The date syrup helped it to brown nicely. It opened up quite well along the score line.

But what about the texture?

Not bad!

It was a dense bread, for sure, being 50% wholemeal and with all those flaxseeds and little pieces of cabbage inside. It sliced well and was moist enough not to feel heavy.

It smelled delicious, the date syrup giving off a sweet aroma (and not a hint of cabbage!).

The flavour was great: the date syrup was the prevailing taste, with (I am told by those with suspicious tastebuds) a detectable cabbage-flavour at the end.

Now, I could not taste the cabbage or the parsley. I ate the bread with soup, or with toppings, or toasted and the cabbage flavour didn't come through for me. The children, on the other hand, with their more sensitive palates, tasted the cabbage and were not particularly fond of it.

This has been an experiment, of course, worth doing and worth repeating.

It's a good way to get some greens, overripe fruit or unwanted vegetables into your diet. If you are catering for children, however, go easy on the cabbage.