Protein Bread - With Yeast!

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As someone who wants to increase her protein intake, I wanted to bake my own protein bread. But I'm German and have a lot of opinions about bread, so I didn't get around modifying a recipe. Why? Because each recipe I found was using baking powder and that's just wrong. You can't use baking powder for bread! It needs yeast!

Total list of ingredients for one loaf (ca. 800g, 180 kcal/100g, 16 g protein/100g)

• 100 g flaxseed flour
• 100 g ground up almonds
• 50 g wheat bran
• 40 g spelt flour
• 5 egg whites
• 300 g Quark
• 1 teaspoon of honey
• 1 package of dry yeast (or alternatively fresh yeast, I just had dry yeast at home)
• 1 pinch of salt

First, you need to take care of the yeast, because the bread you'll be baking has less than ideal conditions for this little fungus. Yeast needs glucose to do what it does best: Make bubbles in your dough . And this bread has mostly protein.

Because of this, we mix a bit of warm water with the teaspoon of honey, until the honey is dissolved. Then add the yeast, mix and let it be for a while. The yeast will start making bubbles and the water surface will rise a bit, as if it's dough. Looks very fun when you see it in reality! And it shows you that your yeast is alive.

And while your yeast is slowly waking from its slumber, you mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Then add the yeast-honey-water and mix again, thoroughly.

Take 5 eggs and separate the yolk from the whites, put the egg whites into the bowl. (If someone figures out something smart to do with the yolks, let me know). Then, again, mix that dough!

Now it's finally time to add the Quark. Apparently, there is no proper English translation for this word, because every translation I did find referred to something slightly different. I linked the Wikipedia article at the beginning of this post, in case you didn't notice. Maybe you can find something similar? The cool thing about Quark is, that it has an extremely high protein and extremely low fat content.

Just add the 300 g to your dough ...

... knead, and roll it into a ball!

Then our precious dough clump has to rest, so we cover it with a clean towel and put it in a warm spot (30°C would be splendid!) for about 2 hours, so the yeast can do its magic and blow the dough up a bit. It won't rise as much as you might expect if you've made normal bread before, but there will be a significant difference.

When the 2 hours are over, knead the dough again (you should hear air escape, that means the yeast did good) and form a dough. Form a loaf and let it rise again while you pre-heat the oven to 180°C (circulating heat). You should also place an oven-proof container with water at the bottom of your oven. The humidity will help you get a nice crust.

I have yet to figure out the perfect bake time, so just wait 20 minutes and then stare intensely at your bread until it's brown. Give it enough time, don't take it out when it's too light. You'll be disappointed.

While cutting the bread, you'll notice that it's somewhat soft and, depending on how much patience you had and how thick the bread is, even a bit sticky. That's due to several factors, mostly the Quark I guess. The bread won't become as "dry" as normal bread and it will "compress" a bit as it cools down, because it's pretty heavy.

But aside from that, it tastes great! And if you toast it (after it is cooled down obviously) it tastes almost like fresh out of the oven, because there is still so much moisture in it.

I hope you enjoyed this short tutorial! I had a lot of fun baking this bread ^.^ (And I'm very proud that making it with yeast worked)