Nourishing Zucchini Bread

I am experimenting more and more with sprouted flours and am loving the results. We have generally been fairly limited on our grain intake largely due to the fact that I do not have a sourdough starter (yet). But I have been testing all of us out on various grains and, after 2 years of eating real food, I am happy to say that we are all tolerating them better than I ever expected. Even I am able to tolerate a piece of sourdough bread every few days. I would have laughed at you had you told me I could ever eat gluten again a few years ago! So hats off to real food and to real grains prepared properly.

So what are sprouted flours?

Sprouted grains are grains that are allowed to develop a ‘sprout’ and then are dried and ground into a flour. This apparently makes them much easier to digest by breaking down the phytic acid in the grain. Just another interesting real foodie trick to prepare our food properly and in my mind – a pretty crafty one.

The reason I love sprouted grains is that there is no need to start and maintain a sourdough starter and there is also no need to soak anything overnight. You can simply use sprouted flour just like you would use regular flour. Instant gratification. If this type of flour isn’t convenient, I do not know what is!

Let’s get to the recipe…

I am growing quite tired of all of the zucchini in my CSA box and so decided it was time to make it into a treat. Why not zucchini bread?! Many zucchini bread recipes are sickly sweet to me now. I wanted this recipe to have a nice hint of sweetness but not be too sweet. I also love using maple syrup in my baking now so I wanted to put it to the test in this bread recipe. The result was so lovely – a bit of sweet, a bit of savory and a lovely nuttiness from the maple syrup. I had this with some cultured ghee on top but any butter will do nicely!

I also took this to another level by spreading some nut-free homemade nutella (recipe coming next week) on top…heaven!

Nourishing Zucchini Bread

Ingredients

• 3 cups sprouted flour (I used spelt and I buy it here)
• 1 T. cinnamon
• 1/8 tsp allspice
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 1 cup maple syrup
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup melted pastured ghee or butter (or you can use coconut oil to make this dairy free)
• 1 Tbsp vanilla
• 2 cups shredded zucchini

Directions

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and grease two glass loaf pans with butter.

Mix all of the dry ingredients together in a glass mixing bowl.

In the bowl from your stand mixer or a separate bowl, combine the maple syrup and eggs and mix on low to incorporate. Then add in the melted ghee or butter and the vanilla. Mix well.

Add in the dry mixture in three parts. Mix until everything is moist and incorporated, then dump in the shredded zucchini.

Pour the batter into the greased loaf pans.

Bake for 50-60 minutes, or until they an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

Cool down thoroughly and then enjoy with a big pat of pastured butter!