Almond & Rosemary Flat NoBread

What does your usual lunch at work look like? What do you eat when you are hungry but you do not have time to prepare a proper meal? And how about your dinners on the busy, tiring days of yours?

Bread. Sandwiches. Bread rolls.

I cannot say if this is the same for you, but me, I grow up on bread. I used to start my day by two, three slices of bread with butter and jam for breakfast, just a few hours later I got hungry and ate a sandwich at school, another one I pushed down to my stomach in the afternoon and possibly, I ate even more bread for dinner – and you know what, I LOVED IT! I love the way bread smells, tastes, the variety, the accessibility and how practical it is to simply “snack on bread with something”.

But…

The simple fact that one is used to do something, or eat in this case, doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s the best way one can behave, right?

People have been used to process and eat cereals for ages, yes, but have you ever thought about why? Do you really think that our great grandmothers ate dark bread because it was super healthy – or, maybe – because it was the only thing they could afford? People had to get the most from what they had, use sources that they had within their reach and sadly, eating fat and meat was not possible and affordable for most. Unlike today.

Nowadays, we have the luxury of chosing what we want to eat, or at most of us – and still, we push down our throats whatever we come across and – sure, a lot of it.

While for our ancestors, the diet was composed mainly of fat and protein, we got used to eat sugars, carbohydrates – and we even started to believe that limiting fat and building our diet on carbs is a good, healthy thing.

I know something about it, I was there too – basically all my life.

As I said earlier, I used to eat bread and carbs with almost any of my meals. Dinner without rice, potatoes, pasta or bread isn’t dinner, right?

When I tried fasting for the first time, some cool thoughts started appearing in my head (cool from my perspective cause I have never ever thought about such things before, I have to admitt): How is it possible, that I can stay withou food for many hours, even days? How is it possible that eating fat makes me feel so full and allowes me to stay without eating for so long? What if there is a purpose for this? What did people used to eat in the past? How often could cavemen eat? What is body fat for, really? Stored energy? Energy that one can use when no food is available?! Why don’t we do the same, why do we store so much energy without ever using, burning it?

During the last months, I have been tying to change some of my eating habits and my focus has been mostly on lower intake of carbs. I started by switching to slow carb diet (eating legumes and beans, avoiding any simple carbs), then I jumped back into ketosis and did 3 days of fasting which were followed by a 36h fast every week. And no, I didn’t do it only in order to lose weight, though it is a nice effect of such changes too. For this time, my focus is at a different place though…

I want to be healthy, I want to feel good in a healthy, balanced body. And I like challenging myself a bit, too! 🙂

All this may sound nice but – it takes some energy to change, even slightly, ones (eating) habits. As I said, I LOVE to eat bread and it is aslo an easy meal-solution that one doesn’t really want to give up. Luckily, I like to bake, spend my time in the kitchen and play with new ingredients and recipes. During the last few months, I spent really a lot of time by trying and failing, hoping to come up with something that will satisfy mine and my boyfriend`s wish to eat a good sandwich – not an eggy fluffy muffin, but a breadroll with a crust, flatbread that keeps it`s shape or even tortillas that makes it possible for us to enjoy a proper taco Friday without loading us up with undisired carbs.

Yes, your assumption is right – i wouldn`t be writing this post if I didn`t succeed 🙂

Bjør Harald and me, we both have been building our diet on fat, protein and vegetables, but he burns – and needs, remarkably more energy than I do. Our bodies, our trainings, our needs are different. Therefore, when it comes to a simple thing like bread, we have different preferences too – I want it to be ketogenic but not crazy high in calories, while he wants a high amout of calories packed into a practical small bread roll.

Luckily, I managet to find and adjust recipes that fit us both, are easy to make and as the result one gets delicious bread, bread rolls or a crunchy flat bread.

In this article, I am going to share with you the recipe for my very favorite – Almond and Rosmary Flatbread!

Soon, I post another recipe for the Cheesy Peasy energy dense Bread Rolls and who knows, maybe more recipes will follow? 🙂

So, Back to the Flatbread!! I write -rosemary almond flatbread-, the rosmary can be skipped though, but believe me, it gives the bread an awesome flavor! However, as a plain bread without any spices one gets a universal bread that can be combined with basically anything or – you can replace rosemary by any spices of your wish, just go crazy! 🙂

I suggest blending all ingredients right before baking, have the oven warm and ready so that the dough doesn’t need to wait on the table, it would get quickly dry! Another tip, water your hands before working with the dough, it can get quite sticky!