Another Vegan Gingerbread With High Protein Content

Polska wersja

My previous recipe for a loaf cake was very basic and and was based on starchy flours and soy protein isolate. New recipe also contains poppy seeds and almond meal. Soy flour is used instead of protein isolate. Large amount of corn flour was replaced by small amount of rice flour. Loafs are now fortified with minerals and vitamins, thanks to the multivitamin tablet being dissolved in water, that is to be mixed with other ingredients. It is hard to tell how much of the micronutrient survive baking process, but at least this article states that vitamin B12 can survive being dissolved in water that is to be mixed with other ingredients and baked. I consume most of those tablets raw, and I have other sources of vitamins and minerals.

Assuming that ingredients did not change their chemical composition during baking, 100 grams of resulting gingerbread should have 299 kcal and 14.6 grams of protein.

Following description involves mixing 1175 grams of dry powders and around 600 grams of water, witch is maximum amount that can fit into my kitchen bowl. This should result in two loafs being produced, and I call it one portion. Two portions (4 loafs) can fit into my oven, so second undocumented portion was made right after the first one, and both of them were baked at the same time. Baking time of four loafs at 190 °C was 1 hour 20 minutes, with fan being continuously turned on. Baking only two loafs would require less heating, so fan could be turned off for example (this should make crust less hard).

This recipe requires use of mixer with dough hooks, that initially combines water with powders. If right amount of water is added, the kneading is extremely easy and can be done on a metal tray covered by baking paper. You can add more water and and kneading can be completely skipped, but this will require longer baking time.

You can find spreadsheets with nutritional values under following links:

nutritional_values_soy_flour_gingerbread.ods, mirror, SHA256: d46afa8b366a19c9c9a0ccdee537085b1c207de53a1bfae064fe42c69bf3b13f

nutritional_values_soy_flour_gingerbread.xlsx, mirror, SHA256: 34ce819163bb432e8f5131fe2c1e7300a1a07eb5f1169ce67dc13bb5c3126ab9

Ingredients:

1. 400 g of wholemeal rye flour (type 2000)
2. 100 g of rice flour
3. 300 g of soy flour
4. 100 g of poppy seeds
5. 100 g of almond meal or flour
6. 100 g of granulated sugar
7. 15 g of salt
8. 15 g of baking soda
9. 25 g of cocoa powder
10. 10 g of cinnamon
11. 10 g of ginger
12. around dozen of cloves (or small amount of powdered form, around 1 g)

last 3 ingredients can be replaced by store-bought gingerbread spice mix (like the one that I used previously, it was made from 25% cinnamon, 6.2% ginger, and also contained cloves, nutmeg, coriander, cardamom, black pepper, allspice and brown sugar)

1. around 600 g of water
2. multivitamin tablet (I used Ironflex Vitamin Forte that has following nutritional values: Biotin - 75 µg; Calcium - 60 mg; Chrome - 75 µg; Copper - 500 µg; Folic acid - 200 µg; Iron - 7 mg; Magnesium - 90 mg; Manganese - 1 mg; Niacin - 16 mg; Pantothenic acid - 6 mg; Potassium - 150 mg; Riboflavin – 7.5 mg; Selenium - 100 µg; Thiamine - 500 µg; Vitamin A - 500 mg; Vitamin B6 - 1 mg; Vitamin B12 - 5 µg; Vitamin C - 40 mg; Vitamin D - 15 µg; Vitamin E - 15 mg; Zinc – 7.5 mg)

Tools:

1. parchment baking paper
2. large bowl
3. knife
4. spoon
5. fork
6. small plate for holding knife and fork
7. scissors
8. stockpot
9. kitchen scale
10. mixer with dough hooks
11. oven with a rack or a tray
12. sink, faucet, washing up liquid and some paper towels / rags for cleaning up after yourself

Ingredients used in this recipe contain gluten and potentially other substances that may be harmful for a portion of human population. You bake it and eat it at your own risk.

Cut whole cloves into small pieces using clean scissors (other methods can also be used to break them).

Note that only half of the cloves visible in the photos were used in the first portion (2 loafs).

Pour 600 g of water (1200 g if you are making 2 portions) into the the appropriate vessel (I used stockpot), then throw multivitamin tablet into the water (or 2 of them if you are making 2 portions). Break the tablet with the use of fork into smaller pieces, and then use mixer to help them dissolve.

Pulverizing tablet into powder (with the use of mortar and pestle), that is later mixed with flours, might be a better option that preservers more of the micronutrients.

Put bowl on scale and start pouring powders inside, while measuring their mass. At first I suggest that you pour portion of rye flour, then remaining ingredients, and finally rest of the rye flour, so that better mixing is achieved. During pouring, when you are close to the desired mass, pour very slow and gently, because otherwise you may put too much of an ingredient.

When all dry ingredients are inside the bowl, mix them all thoroughly with a spoon (or other utensil that you have at hand). Note that during stirring I take bowl from the scale, so that I won’t break anything.

Start pouring multivitamin water to the bowl and mixing it with a mixer that has dough hooks attached. Add a a little water, the mix powders with it, “rinse” and repeat.

I had 1200 g of water in a single vessel, so I had to constantly check how much lighter stockpot gets. This was achieved by weighting stockpot on a kitchen scale. I was aiming to achieve right negative value (scale was “tared” when stockpot full of liquid was sitting atop it).

2024-11-04 UPDATE: I noticed that pouring mixed powder from separate vessel in small portions that are successively mixed with portions of the water, works much better, than pouring water onto a pile containing all of the powders. Using 2 bowls, instead of a pot, each holding 600 g of water and one multivitamin tablet, simplifies the production of 4 loaves.

Set your oven to 190 °C and 1 hour 20 minutes. Fan was turned on when I baked this batch of gingerbread. Your oven may be different from mine and other settings may work better (or worse).

While you wait for the oven to heat up, you may perform Step 6. If you are not sure that you can do Step 7 quickly, or you want to make more loafs (second portion), then perform Step 7 first, and turn on the oven only when everything is ready.

Place a tray (or other suitable object, kneading board would actually be best, but you would have to clean it) on a flat surface next to a bowl. Cover top of it with baking paper. Shake the contents of the bowl onto the baking paper. Start pressing and stretching of the dough, and continue, until it has a homogeneous consistency. If right amount of water was added dough should be neither too sticky or too crumbly. Now you can cut large blob of dough in half, and form two loafs. Score the loafs by making two perpendicular cuts on top of each of them (the ones I did were too deep).

If you are going to make another portion, you should place finished loafs onto another rack/tray covered with baking paper, and then use the same tray to make next loafs. This should reduce amount of the mess made.

When loafs are ready, you can use the scissors to cut out unnecessary baking paper located around the loafs. Remove any crumbs that were left on the tray.

Once oven reached right temperature, put tray(s) or rack(s) inside and wait. Be careful not to put loafs too close to heating elements, or they may be burned. Wait for 1 hour and 20 minutes and turn off the oven. After the baking process is done, you can open oven from time to time, so that moisture can escape. Wipe any excessive water that condensed inside the oven.

After few additional hours in slowly cooling oven, you should be able take the loafs out (but if you are in a hurry probably nothing bad will happen if you will take them out sooner, just be careful not to burn your skin). When I measured masses of the loafs approximately 5 hours after oven was turned off, one of the loafs had 815 g, another 728 g.

Skin of the gingerbread might be quite hard right after baking, but after a day of two in the breadbox it should “suck” moisture out of the gingerbread’s interior. This loaf cake resists mold much better then the on from my previous recipe, most likely due to lower water content, and can be stored for much longer.

In my option, this gingerbread tastes best when served with fruit spread, particularly purple plum powidl.

2024-11-04 UPDATE: If you can't eat this loaf cake fast enough, freeze problematic loafs, by placing room-temperature loafs in the freezer, and then taking them out of it at least few hours before cutting and consumption (cutting ice is not an easy feat). Recently I started adding effects of a few turns of pepper mill into bowl with powders, and stopped scoring tops of the loafs.

I would like to mention that I tried to make this gingerbread with instant yeasts, but effects were very disappointing. And tasted like Marmite, with would actually not be that bad, except for all the sugar, and wrong choice of spices.

If spread that contains additional supplements that fill the gaps in nutritional requirements would be served with gingerbread (or hot flavored yeasty version), then this could be extremely good staple food. Remember that different people have different nutritional needs, for instance, women (those who menstruate) require large amounts of iron, preferably in heme form (that can be created during fermentation process). Soybeans, and other ingredients, contain antinutrients, such as phytic acid.

I noticed that gingerbread that is scored with more cuts looks better. Making two sets of parallel lines that make rhombus shape ("diamond") in the middle works well. According to this infographic, described scoring technique is called “Polka Écartée”, at least in a more dense variant (that also could be tried).

This step was added on 2024-07-21.