I have been baking gluten, sugar and yeast free bread based on apples and buckwheat flour in many modifications, using fresh apples, apple puree, different cooked vegetables puree, as well as fresh cauliflower blended into crumbs. The recipe survived all modifications with flying colours and proved to be flexible and reliable. I had requests from several readers for egg replacement in the recipe. It was a quite common topic in discussions about ingredient replacement. It was interesting for me to try flax “egg” version of the recipe, making this bread suitable for vegan diet.
One of the requests was also related to whole egg replacement with only egg whites, with the elimination of egg yolks, reducing fat content and enriching bread with protein. For that purpose I baked the loaf based on 3 egg whites, instead of 2 whole eggs. The result, both visually and taste wise was identical.
The colour of the loaf reminds rye bread, but it greatly differs in taste, which is mild with a touch of flaxseed overtones. The bread is quite dense as all breads of this line are, but is soft to the bite. It does not crumble when cut.
Ingredients:
- 25g flax seeds, ground
- 75g water, room temperature
- 150g peeled apple pieces or 150g pure apple puree
- 130g buckwheat flour
- 4g sea salt
- 6g baking soda (can be replaced by baking powder)
- 1g cumin powder (can be replaced by garlic powder or any other dry spice mix)
- 10g flaxseed meal
The use of baking powder instead of baking soda, and golden flax seeds give lighter colour to the crust and the insides of the bread loaf.
Preparation:
- grind 25g flax seeds, add 75g water, mix
- let flax “egg” stand for 15-30 minutes for the flax seeds to absorb all water, the mixture can be kept refrigerated, I used one portion after being stored for 48 hours refrigerated without any change in baking product, let the mixture become room temperature before use
- mix all dry ingredients: buckwheat flour, flaxseed meal, baking soda/baking powder, salt, cumin (other spices) powder
- blend flax egg with apple pieces or apple puree on high for 5-7 minutes, the mixture will not increase its volume compared to blending apples/apple puree with whole eggs or egg whites
- add dry ingredients to wet ingredients, mix them well
- transfer the batter to well greased baking pan (10cm x 20cm), in regular size bread loaf baking tin the loaf will be flat
- bake in preheated to 170C oven for 60 min with no fan regime, this regime allows the batter to rise higher during relatively slow baking
- let the loaf rest on a wire rack
- this bread can be cut while still warm
The texture stays the same on the second day, just cover the loaf with a kitchen towel. Sliced bread can be frozen and defrosted in a toaster. Contrary to other gluten free bread, buckwheat and apple bread tastes better fresh and is good without being toasted.
Other recipes of buckwheat bread with whole eggs as an ingredient can be found here (with apples/apple puree),
here recreated with different vegetables by other blogger (with cooked vegetable puree),
here (with fresh cauliflower).
Cooking Without Gluten 
This looks amazing! Thank you for doing all the research that goes into these delicious recipes 🙂
Thank you!
I’ve tried a couple of time to convert a few of your bread recipes to US measurements and I’m obviously doing something wrong because the volume seems to be about half of what you would expect. Are you weighing the dry ingredients to get the grams? Are you able to provide instructions in cup/spoon measurements? Thanks!
The recipes of bread with strict limitations, this one included, I usually make for small, half size loaves, as many of that kind of batters are difficult to bake to perfect condition in regular size baking tin. So, I can presume that your conversions were right. I will not recommend to double quantity of ingredients in this particular recipe. Baking in regular loaf will give a flat bread with low height. In general, gluten, and especially grain and eggs free bread recipes, better baked with exact quantity of ingredients, measured in weight, as volume (cups, spoons) can give different to the published recipe results, as cups can be packed differently. Even with weight measurements, gluten free recipes can give results, slightly different, as flours can be of various textures (coarse or fine) that changes their ability to retain moisture. I personally worked with 3 distinct varieties of buckwheat flour, one of them, usually darker colour absorbs and retains more liquid and has to added in less quantity. This type of buckwheat flour has tiny black specks which I can guess come from the outer coating of buckwheat kernels.
Thank you Irene — your response is very helpful and I’m so grateful that I found your website. It sounds like I really I need to invest in a scale since I have no choice but to bake all of my own breads. The only yeast free bread I’ve had any success with has been oat-based, and you’re right there were huge variances in the end results with home-ground, coarse flour vs. commercial finely ground flour.
I am glad Amber, that the site could be of help to you. It will be so much easier for you when exact weight can be registered. Many recipes now present quantities in weight units.
Thanks for this recipe. I tried the buckwheat and apple combination and it produced one of the best textures of gluten free breads I’ve tried to bake so far. The only downside of the recipe is it has a very strong baking soda taste. Any suggestions to remedy this? Thanks again for sharing. Much appreciated.
Thanks for commenting, to reduce the taste you have two options, reduce baking soda quantity, because different samples produce different intensity of the taste. The second option is to replace soda with gluten free baking powder. I use soda only in cases when I bake for people who can’t tolerate baking powder, as rice flour is added as a filler. I also would like to mention that buckwheat (or buckwheat/quinoa) bread based on apple puree can be successfully baked as regular/large size loaf without any issues. However I never tried baking large loaves without using eggs.