Whole Wheat Honey Chia Bread!

Look below. That is a warm loaf of fresh ground whole wheat honey chia bread. Yes, that's right, I said chia.

Chaaa-chaaa-chaaa-chia!

I tried to sprout a chia pet many years ago, but failed. I couldn't get the seeds to sprout. I still have the terracotta pig after all these years. Here it is:

Recently, however, I have been running across articles that tout the health benefits of chia seeds. Apparently, chia seeds have more omega-3 fatty acids than flax seeds! They also provide fiber, calcium, molybdenum, phosphorus, magnesium, manganese, copper, niacin, and zinc and iron. Wow!

Anyway, lately I have been experimenting with trying to perfect my whole wheat bread recipe. I wanted to make it vegan friendly. (Many of the recipes I previously tried used eggs and/or dry milk). I also wanted to avoid adding gluten flour. Well, it finally hit me that I should try using some chia in there. It worked great and is, by far, my favorite whole wheat bread recipe.

Here is the recipe. (I made this in a Zojurishi Bread Machine- I'm not sure how it would work in other machines).

First, I soaked 2 tablespoons of chia seeds in 6 tablespoons of water. This will turn into a viscous gel, like in the picture on the right, below:

 While the seeds were soaking, I ground 3 cups of wheat berries. Tristan helped:

Then we put everything into the bread pan in the following order:

• 1 1/3 cup hot water
• 1/3 cup oil
• 1/4 honey
• The flour I ground from 3 cups of wheat berries
• 2 tsp salt (on sides of flour, not top)
• The chia mixture I made from 2 Tbs chia and 6 Tbs water
• 1 Tbs yeast

It is important not to put anything on top of the flour except the yeast. You dig a small hole for the yeast to go in at the top of the flour. Below is a photo. Note the chia mixture on both ends, and the yeast on top.

Then it goes in. Check it out kneading (the dark speckles are the chia seeds):

After that, we just wait, while enjoying the wonderful smell of it baking. The bread machine does all the work. Two and a half hours later:

Delicious and healthy. I love it.

As an afterthought, I'm going to try to sprout some seeds for my chia pet again. Certainly if I can make a loaf of bread I should be able to sprout a chia pet, right?