Adventure Bread toasted with melted butter… so good.
Josey Baker’s Adventure Bread is wonderfully hearty stuff… dense and flavorful with the nutrition and energy you need for a long hike, or maybe a march for a worthy cause. I’ve modified* the original recipe to use steel cut oats. Makes one loaf that you’ll cut into four 8 inch by 2 inch bricks. (Note that you’ll need to buy an 8 inch by 4 inch non-stick bread pan if you don’t already have one. You can also fill the pan halfway up and bake in two pans, which I did for the loaves pictured here.) THIS RECIPE HAS BEEN REVISED AS OF 4/19. If you’ve made it using my previous recipe please use this one in the future.
Ingredients*:
235 g (2 1/4 c) steel cut oats
600 g (2 1/2 c) water
160 g (1 c) sunflower seeds, hulled
65 g (1/2 c) pumpkin seeds, hulled
90 g (3/4 c) almonds, toasted and coarsely chopped OR a combination of almond flour and almonds
120 g (3/4 c) flaxseeds
25 g (1/3 c) psyllium** seed husk
25 g (3 T) chia seeds
15 g (2 1/2 t) Kosher salt
40g (2 T) maple syrup (Grade B preferred)
55 g (1/4 c) olive oil
Method: bring water to boil and pour over oats in a heatproof bowl; soak overnight. Toast the pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds in a 350 degree oven until lightly browned, about 10-15 minutes (don’t let them burn). Add seeds and all other dry ingredients to oats and mix thoroughly. Add maple syrup and olive oil and mix again; taste for salt and add a bit more if needed. Transfer to an 8 inch by 4 inch bread pan which has been rubbed with oil or butter. Bake 1 hour or longer in a 400 degree oven or until bread pulls away from sides of pan. (Longer baking, up to 1 1/2 hours, doesn’t seem to hurt.) Turn out on a rack and cool at least two hours before slicing, then cut lengthwise into two loaves with a sharp serrated knife. Enjoy as-is or toasted with butter, nut butter or cheese.
*There are some discrepancies between the weights in grams from Josey’s cookbook and the cup/spoon measurements so I’ve provided both and you can use one or the other, but do it consistently. I’m sure the original loaf was a very ad-hoc effort so you are fine making modifications and substitutions.
**Psyllium, pronounced “silly-um”, sounds like something out of an Uncle Scrooge comic but it’s essential to bind the ingredients since there is no gluten. To add to the merriment, psyllium is usually marketed as a colon health product though you may be able to find it in the bulk baking goods section.
UPDATE: on a return trip to San Francisco I picked up a comparison loaf of Josey Baker’s bread… see below. For this prep I used rolled oats not steel cut (that’s why mine looks more raggedy) and also upped the salt a bit since I realized his cookbook recommendation is too cautious. Meanwhile, he’s been tweaking his recipe according to the published ingredients: he now uses sesame seeds instead of pumpkin seeds and has eliminated the chia seeds. Regardless, both loaves taste great.
Adventure Bread comparison (mine is on the left)
