For those of you who know me, I am always the one who likes to do things a little differently.  I don’t like to follow the crowd and I struggle with being told how to do things—yes, I will admit that.  This is probably why I started my own business at age 23 and am constantly jamming out to Taylor Swift’s song “Shake it Off!”

Anyways all this being said, I really like to use creative ingredients in the kitchen.  If you follow my blog you will notice that I use almond flour sparingly (because truth be told I don’t really like it) and am always looking for different ways to make things like my grain and nut free sandwich bread or favorite pizza recipe made from dinner rolls.  Within the grain free recipe community, there are often many recipes that use almond or coconut flour, which yes most of my recipes use, but I love to experiment and try to come up with recipes using a combination of different flours and ingredients.  And of course now that I ranted about almond flour, of course you will see it in the recipe, oh dear!

Enter chestnut flour, seen in my grain free gingerbread bundt cakes, which is now one of my favorite grain free flours! It looks sort of like a combination of coconut flour and regular flour and even acts a bit like that too, well I really don’t know how regular flour acts cause I haven’t used it in years!  It took me a few times to get used to baking with, but now I absolutely love it!  Chestnut flour is a bit higher in carbohydrates than nut based flours or coconut flour, which is why I combined it with a nut flour.

This bread is a hearty bread and reminds me of that amazing brown bread at the Cheesecake Factory.  I love to toast a slice and spread butter over it with my morning eggs and cup of coffee. The best part is, well to me at least, is there is no added sugar but the chestnut flour makes the bread somewhat sweet.  Well, I did dust the top with a bit of maple sugar because it gives the best crusty outer texture that I love in a good loaf of bread.

Chestnut flour is an Italian flour that has been used for centuries in traditional baking and has a sweet, slightly spiced flavor to it.  I get mine here on Nuts.com as well as most of my other flours and many of my pantry goods.  The psyllium husk powder, not to be confused with psyllium husks, help the bread rise and stay together, something that is often difficult to achieve without gluten.

I hope you enjoy this bread as much as I do!!

Paleo Brown Bread (grain and gluten free)

Ingredients

• 1 cup chestnut flour
• 1 cup almond flour
• 3 tbsp psyllium husk powder
• 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp cardamom
• 5 eggs
• 3/4 cup coconut milk, full fat and unsweetened
• 8 tbsp butter, melted
• 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 1/2 tsp maple sugar, for dusting on top (optional)

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 8.5 by 4.5 inch loaf pan with parchment paper lengthwise, cutting to fit the pan.

Sift together all dry ingredients being thorough to remove all clumps.   Add remaining wet ingredients and blend together with a hand mixer. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and briefly blend again.  Immediately pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan, smoothing out the top with a spatula.

Bake for 60-65 minutes or until a tester comes out clean and the bread feels firm to touch.

Cool the bread in the pan for 15 minutes then gently lift up on the edges of the parchment paper to remove the bread.  Discard the parchment paper and cool for an additional 10 minutes before slicing.

Serve toasted and warm topped with a slice of butter.