What is the strangest thing you have ever used to make bread?

Lately I have been thinking a lot about bread. Bread has been an essential food consumed for thousands of years. From the Egyptians to the Vikings, to Asia and the Middle East, it has been an essential food source and the start of commercial food production. As essential as it is, it’s not a surprise that, as a homesteader, you start thinking if it’s possible to grow your own bread flours.
I am growing sorghum, sweet potatoes, Cassava, big boy pumpkins and butternut squash for flour. While the pie pumpkins are nice, they are too sweet for baking breads, but the big boy carving pumpkins are ideal.
Once you start researching options to grow (especially for gluten free flours), you dive down a rabbit hole full of strange suggestions. You find things like Cricket flour, banana flour and so much more.
This brings me to my questions. What is the strangest thing you have ever baked with? And how did it turn out?

I don't think I've ever used anything I would consider weird, just the more commonly used gluten and gluten free grain, pseudograin, nut and seed flours with varying degrees of success. Wheat, spelt, rice, oat, sorghum, buckwheat, corn, arrowroot, potato starch, pea and bean, teff, chestnut, almond.  Possibly some others I've forgotten. But Jiminy, definitely NOT ever going to try cricket flour!

Following with interest!

I used to make sourdough with leftover rice pudding (and sometimes finely chopped curry leftovers).  It made the best toast.

r ranson wrote:I used to make sourdough with leftover rice pudding (and sometimes finely chopped curry leftovers).  It made the best toast.

That definitely qualifies. Now I want to try doing that LOL. I make rice pudding frequently, and have only tried using the leftovers for pancakes. Great idea.

Jane Mulberry wrote:I don't think I've ever used anything I would consider weird, just the more commonly used gluten and gluten free grain, pseudograin, nut and seed flours with varying degrees of success. Wheat, spelt, rice, oat, sorghum, buckwheat, corn, arrowroot, potato starch, pea and bean, teff, chestnut, almond.  Possibly some others I've forgotten. But Jiminy, definitely NOT ever going to try cricket flour!

Following with interest!

I love making steamed puddings with chestnut flour. It’s so good. I have actually tried the crickets, and didn’t like it. It was in a protein bar. I am definitely not going to go catching some for making flours LOL.

i will confess to using cricket, grasshopper, and mealworm flour (though mealworm is so fatty that it’s almost a paste) at various times in the past. when enough is used, it can give a richness that’s pretty fascinating in bread. too much, and it leans farther toward seafoody and starts getting less pleasant to more palates.

nowadays, any appropriate insects that get caught go to the chickens. their proteins are way more approachable.

Aside: I dimly recall reading of unusual leavening agents in old-time outdoorsman's books. These may be more for bannock, pan bread or pancakes rather than fancy bread. A teaspoon of fluffy fresh fire ashes? A teaspoon of dry fluffy snow? I'll try to trace the sources.

I will not ever use an insect as food, as I've learned too many hints and tricks of living off the land that I do not feel I'd ever reach any point in my life I would need to. Nearly all wild grasses are edible, for instance. Seeds get you farther though, in a caloric sense.  Over the past year I've been on an SCD diet that uses alternative flours. My flour of choice is coconut. Almond is great tasting and easy to bake with, but consuming too many almonds can cause kidney stones, as almonds are high in oxalates. Here is a good coconut flour recipe: thehealthierbite.com
I've also used a mix of cassava flour and coconut flour when baking, which was good. Not all flours are created equal, so blending flours is helpful. About 10 years ago, I was baking with a 4-flour bean blend, which was gluten free but starchy. How to make Four Bean Flour Blend: 2 ½ c. garbanzo/fava bean flour ¾ c. potato starch or cornstarch ¼ c. tapioca flour ½ c. sorghum flour
I'd be interested in incorporating sunflower seeds into a flour blend. Pumpkin seeds are so healthy, I'd try those too. I have used flax seed in some recipes. You can't go crazy with flax as it has a strong taste that can overpower a recipe, but again, very healthy.

My Low Carb Cheddar Bread uses flaxseed:

https://permies.com/t/87774#721541

I basically always make the base out of slightly coarse, freshly ground, whole wheat/rye flour, but I add all kind of crazy mix-ins -- just whatever is leftover (rice, oats, chili, marinara, etc) or nuts/seeds/dried fruit from the pantry or cheese before it goes bad. I'm usually happy with it, but the rest of the family tends to like my wife's bread better which is more traditional and has a lighter crumb.

i throw a lot of cooked veg and starch in breads (baked as well as steamed)- cassava and pumpkin are favorites! and years of making Struan bread taught me that any cooked grain can go in a bread too-- rice, sorgum, wheat berries, whatever.

this bread, despite not being "strange", is a bit different and one of my favorites. i'll have to make it this week. https://food52.com/blog/21293-savory-carrot-bread
Goes great with tomato jam (i just bought 10 kg of tomatoes, today is sauce/chutney/jam day).

ETA: and surfing off what Christopher said: ("marinara")-- whenever there's a smallish amount of red sauce left, I use it as the liquid to make whole wheat scones. With some rosemary and coarse salt on top. Fine with soup.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Aside: I dimly recall reading of unusual leavening agents in old-time outdoorsman's books. These may be more for bannock, pan bread or pancakes rather than fancy bread. A teaspoon of fluffy fresh fire ashes? A teaspoon of dry fluffy snow? I'll try to trace the sources.

I read of using clean finely sifted wood ash fairly recently, wish I could recall where, because whoever it was had actually tested it. Probably here on Permies! It was a post or article about replacements for baking powder. Obviously any pan bread made using the wood ash would also need an acid to get any rise. I think they used ACV for that.

yep, leigh tate did some work with less-known leavening agents. ash is alkaline, so it can be used something like baking powder.

her e-book thread:
permies.com/wiki/157755/Bake-Baking-Powder-eBook-Leigh

Tereza Okava wrote:i throw a lot of cooked veg and starch in breads (baked as well as steamed)- cassava and pumpkin are favorites! and years of making Struan bread taught me that any cooked grain can go in a bread too-- rice, sorgum, wheat berries, whatever.

this bread, despite not being "strange", is a bit different and one of my favorites. i'll have to make it this week. https://food52.com/blog/21293-savory-carrot-bread
Goes great with tomato jam (i just bought 10 kg of tomatoes, today is sauce/chutney/jam day).

ETA: and surfing off what Christopher said: ("marinara")-- whenever there's a smallish amount of red sauce left, I use it as the liquid to make whole wheat scones. With some rosemary and coarse salt on top. Fine with soup.

Interesting recipe! And I'd never heard of struan bread. I used to make a similar no-knead yeasted bread with a whole wheat flour base and a varying mix of seeds and grains soaked overnight that usually included cornmeal, millet, rye, steel-cut rather than rolled oats, buckwheat, rice, sesame seeds, linseeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and whatever else I had to hand. It was a heavy bread, like a Scandinavian rye bread, but fabulous fresh. It tasted great toasted too but tended to crumble!

Jane Mulberry wrote:no-knead yeasted bread with a whole wheat flour base and a varying mix of seeds and grains soaked overnight that usually included cornmeal, millet, rye, steel-cut rather than rolled oats, buckwheat, rice, sesame seeds, linseeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and whatever else I had to hand. It was a heavy bread, like a Scandinavian rye bread, but fabulous fresh. It tasted great toasted too but tended to crumble!

sounds brilliant, i was at a german place this weekend and had a nice seed-heavy bread just like that, it was great!

The basic struan recipe i started with is https://www.food.com/recipe/brother-junipers-struan-56155 and i can vouch for its flexibility if you want to start playing with things! it is a nice bread that uses no oil or eggs, in case you're out or hosting people who prefer to avoid them, and i never make it with buttermilk, only milk+vinegar, and often replace the honey with whatever i have (brown sugar, molasses, white sugar).

Thanks, Tereza! I did an online search when you mentioned Struan bread and a different variation of the Brother Juniper recipe came up. I haven't tried baking bread for ages. Unfortunately where we live now has a ridiculously tiny kitchen with about a 1' square area for food prep! Cooking anything much has become a challenge.  I've saved the recipe and will give this a try when we're in our new place and I have more room to play with cooking again.

I once tried to make bread from wood millet (Milium effusum) seeds. It turned out... Hm. The taste is quite nice. The consistency, not so much. The seeds are really hard, and I didn't have access to a proper grain mill. If I had, it might have worked better.

I also tried a few wild plants as additives in "regular" (wheat) bread. The nicest was probably dried, powdered nettle leaves.

I have used fresh ashes many times as pancake leavening, without adding some kind of acid. It always worked and tasted better than those made with baking soda. And I also made pancakes once out of a droopy wild Carex sedge, the kind that grows on sandy or rocky riverbanks in part shade. Like Eino’s wood millet experiment, it could also have used a little work on the consistency. Maybe we just need to find ways to adequately de-hull the wild grasses.

Jane Mulberry wrote:

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Aside: I dimly recall reading of unusual leavening agents in old-time outdoorsman's books. These may be more for bannock, pan bread or pancakes rather than fancy bread. A teaspoon of fluffy fresh fire ashes? A teaspoon of dry fluffy snow? I'll try to trace the sources.

I read of using clean finely sifted wood ash fairly recently, wish I could recall where, because whoever it was had actually tested it. Probably here on Permies! It was a post or article about replacements for baking powder. Obviously any pan bread made using the wood ash would also need an acid to get any rise. I think they used ACV for that.

I actually use this type of ash in baking. I am from Denmark and at Christmas we bake something we call brown cookies. It’s used for leveling and to make the cookies more crispy. It foams up when it’s added to the doug. In Denmark it’s called pot ash. I will see if I can find the recipe and post it here. They are molasses cookies, with sliced almonds and orange peal jam or candies orange peal. It’s a favorite we make several times a year, even though it’s supposed to be a Christmas cookie. Here is the recipe:

Classic danish brown cookies
Makes 100 - 120 cookies when cut thin

Ingredients:
1 1/2 tsp potaske (calcium carbonate) or 1 tsp baking soda
50 ml. Water
250 gr. Butter
200 gr. Molasses
200 gr. Sugar
50 gr. Chopped blanched almonds
100 gr. Orange preserve or soft candied peels
500 gr. Paleo flour mix or wheat pastry flour.
2 tablespoons of brown cookie spice
Or 1 tsp ground ginger, 3 tsp ground cinnamon and 2 tsp ground cloves

Instructions:
1. Dissolve the potaske in the water
2. Butter, sugar and molasses are brought to a boil, and the water/potaske mixture are mixed in.
3.  Set it aside to cool to room temperature.
4. Mix the other ingredients together and mix in the butter/sugar/molasses mixture.
5. Kneed the dough well and roll it into a log.
6. Place it in the fridge for 24 hours.
7. Slice the dough in as thin slices as you can.
8. Bake for 8-10 minutes in a 350F oven

Wow! It's great to hear from people who have used the wood ash leavening. I love the different ideas here!

I'm happy to see this post after I just shared about using sunroot (jerusalem) flour for bread. I love bread and also love to experiment with add ins. Some common ones for me are acorn flour, leftover applesauce or porridge, and pumpkinseed meal leftover from making milk. I've tried ground nettle leaf and dock seed flour with little success, but I think a smidge could work.

We harvest redbud seed pods in the green stage when they look mostly like snow peas. This is before the 'spine' of the pods become thick and hard. We dehydrate these in the greenhouse. I have powdered this down and used it as 1/4 replacement of flour in bread. It makes an interesting but dense loaf, not appropriate for sandwiches. Maybe 1/8 would be better as a slicer.

It does lend a vaguely citrus flavor to the bread. Also, kinda lime greenish tinted bread.

Note: I have not seen any references suggesting to dehydrating these. But Eattheweeds says the fresh GREEN pods are edible. They are great in stirfrys!