This has become one of our new favourites. This bread can keep fresh and tasty for over a week after baking. It has an artisan feel to it and with a dollop of organic butter can be the perfect accompaniment to a chilled/or hot soup.
As a side note, pumpkin seeds are extremely beneficial for men of a certain age – they will help to keep their prostate healthy and functioning very well into old age.
Ingredients:
- 2 ½ cups pumpkin seeds
- 1 tsp ground black pepper (or coarse pepper)
- ¾ tsp baking soda
- 2 tsp baking powder
- ¼ cup chia seeds
- 1 ½ cup zucchini, coarsely grated
- 3 large eggs
- 2 tbsp vinegar
- 2 tbsp olive oil
What to do:
- Preheat your oven to 150o
- Using a coffee grinder, grind the pumpkin seeds into a floury substance and transfer into a large mixing bowl.
- Add your ground black pepper, baking soda, baking powder and chia seeds to the ground pumpkin seeds and mix well.
- Grate the zucchini and add to the bowl with all the mixed ingredients.
- Break 3 large eggs into the bowl, add the vinegar and olive oil and mix all the dry and wet ingredients thoroughly with a spoon. You should end up with a nice doughy mixture.
- Line a cake tin (21 x 11cm) with baking paper and carefully transfer the dough into the tin. Sprinkle with either sunflower or pumpkin seeds.
- Transfer the baking tin into your pre-heated oven and bake for approximately 40 – 50 mins (this time may vary depending on your oven).
- It should rise nicely in the baking tin and present you with a delicious looking loaf of bread.
Bon Appetite!
Some interesting background information on Pumpkin Seeds
- Pumpkin seeds have long been valued as a source of the mineral zinc, and the World Health Organization recommends their consumption as a good way of obtaining this nutrient. Zinc is especially concentrated in this endosperm envelope. Because it can be tricky to separate the endosperm envelope from the shell, eating the entire pumpkin seed—shell and all—will ensure that all of the zinc-containing portions of the seed will be consumed.
- While pumpkin seeds are not a highly rich source of vitamin E in the form of alpha-tocopherol, recent studies have shown that pumpkin seeds provide us with vitamin E in a wide diversity of forms. From any fixed amount of a vitamin, we are likely to get more health benefits when we are provided with that vitamin in all of its different forms. In the case of pumpkin seeds, vitamin E is found in all of the following forms: alpha-tocopherol, gamma-tocopherol, delta-tocopherol, alpha-tocomonoenol, and gamma-tocomonoenol. These last two forms have only recently been discovered in pumpkin seeds, and their health benefits—including antioxidant benefits—are a topic of current interest in vitamin E research, since their bioavailability might be greater than some of the other vitamin E forms. The bottom line: pumpkin seeds’ vitamin E content may bring us more health benefits that we would ordinarily expect due to the diverse forms of vitamin E found in this food.
- This information (not the recipe) was taken directly from www.whfoods.com