Sunday, February 14, 2010

Vegan Orange Cranberry Wheat Bread

For some time now I have been wanting to try different egg substitutes that I haven't used yet, to see what kind of results I get with each of them. Usually my default egg substitute is flax, because it is both healthy and works as a great binding agent in bakes. In the past I have also used corn starch, soy flour, bananas and other fruit purees as egg substitutes successfully.

I came upon a reference to apple cider vinegar as an egg substitute in some book some time back, but I am not able to recall the name of the book and decided to give it a try in this bread. I loved how the vinegar gave the bread a very light and airy texture which was great but just vinegar by itself is not too much of a binding agent and resulted in a more crumbly bread.

So for my second try, I made this bread with both flax and apple cider vinegar and it worked out perfectly. If you liked this Orange flavored oatmeal bar then you will surely like this bread too, so go ahead give this one a try, it is really quite simple to make despite its long list of ingredients that  make it seem quite daunting:-)


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Ingredients and Method to make Orange cranberry wheat bread

Dry Ingredients
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 cup whole white wheat flour ( Read more about this flour here)
1/2 cup all purpose flour
2 tbsp powdered dried orange (optional) (see notes)
3/4 cup dried sweetened cranberries
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

Wet Ingredients
1/2 cup orange juice
1/4 cup oil
1 tsp orange essence

In place of 1 egg
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar+ 1 tbsp oil + 1 tsp baking powder (whisked together)

In place of the second egg
1 tbsp flax seeds/alsi + 3 tbsp water (flax seeds powdered fine and whisked together with 3 tbsp water)

a few extra drops of oil to grease the loaf pan

Pre heat oven to 350 deg F. Grease a loaf pan and keep aside.

In a large bowl add all the dry ingredients and mix well.

Powder 1 tbsp flax seeds in a spice grinder and whisk it with 3 tbsp water and let this mixture sit for about 5 minutes.

In a large bowl mix together orange juice, orange essence and oil.

Then whisk together apple cider vinegar+ oil + baking powder together and add to this mixture.

Add the flax seeds + water mixture to this and mix well.

Quickly add this entire wet mixture to the dry mixture and mix in gently with a spatula.

The resultant mixture looks lumpy and just enough wet.

Pour this mixture into pre greased loaf pan, place in oven and bake for 35 to 40 mins until toothpick or cake tester inserted in the center comes clean.

Remove from oven and cool thoroughly before slicing and serving. Use within a couple of days. Refrigerate or freeze the balance of the bread if you will not use it up within a couple of days.

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 Notes

I regularly keep a stock of sliced oranges dried in the oven at 200 deg F for 2 to 2 1/2 hours, read more on how to do this here So for this recipe, I just powdered one such slice and added it to the dry ingredients for a more orangey flavor. The earlier time I made this I tried it with only 1 tsp orange essence for flavor and it worked well too, so the powdered dried orange is entirely optional.

The first time I made this I used just apple cider vinegar, oil and baking powder to replace eggs and found that the resulting bread was quite crumbly so I would suggest using at least one tbsp of flax + water and not replacing both eggs with apple cider vinegar + oil combination.

This bread turned out soft fluffy and just right as far as moisture is concerned for me. If you want to have a more moist bread, replace apple cider vinegar + oil mixture with another tbsp of flax seeds + 3 tbsp of water,to be powdered and whisked with water, as has been described earlier.

22 comments :

Priya Suresh said...

Such a delicious loaf of bread, looks pretty and fantastic, love ur idea of drying orange peels, wonderful will do the same..

Unknown said...

Looks soft, info abt egg substitutes is useful!

Unknown said...

very beautiful and perfect..i al so got some dried cranberries with the idea of baking bread..

Devasena Hariharan said...

looks really soft & delicious! Good try!

Preeti Kashyap said...

perfect loaf of bread....thanks on the info abt egg substitutes!

Parita said...

Bread looks perfectly baked!

Latha said...

Orange&cranberry are delicious combo. Looks gorgeous.

kitchen queen said...

The bread looks very soft and spongy.

Simplyfood said...

Bread looks delicious and I love the eggless idea too.

Gita Jaishankar said...

The bread looks very soft and moist Usha...great idea of using egg substitutes and making it very healthy!

chef and her kitchen said...

Lovely loaf dear..looks very pretty

Priya Narasimhan said...

bread has come out so good..perfectly baked..

Jaishree Iyer said...

The bread looks very soft and delicious ..

gtyuk said...

the bread looks absolutely delicious with that cranberry/orange combination, the cider vinegar as egg substitute is a very interesting fact, lovely recipe!!

notyet100 said...

bread looks so yum...

Veggie Hut said...

thats so tempting!

Renuka Bedre - Rao said...

bread looks so soft and full of different colors! loved it!!

Deepa G Joshi said...

the bread looks so delicious..thanks for the tip on storing the oranges..

www.foodlyrics.com

Ramya Vijaykumar said...

Vinegar and baking pwd makes a great egg substitute... The cake speaks for it looks very nice... With Orange wow breakfast would be refgreshing!!!!

http://memoryarchieved.blogspot.com

Anupama said...

I almost like everything with orange flavor in it and this is the first time I'm coming across a bread recipe with that flavor. Great click and recipe!

indhu said...

this looks delicious.. love how you have made it really healthy with wheat flour and like the experiment with flax seed and apple cider vinegar :)

- Indhu (www.thayirsaadham.com)

Kiran said...

Hi Usha,
This is the first time I am visiting your blog and I really like the way you are adding oats and other healthy alternatives in many recipes you make.All your recipes are very inspiring.I love to cook the same way.Always trying to cook with whole foods.Do visit my blog at your convenience.
Thanks,
Kiran(http://kiranjay.blogspot.com)

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