Savory Carrot Dill Oat Bread with Walnuts
We currently have most of a huge bag of nice fresh carrots that Mr. C picked up from the newish Costco here in town, so I’ve been trying to think of some yummy things to do with the root vegetable windfall. Expect to see more recipes involving carrots coming up here in the near future!
Inevitably, I started thinking of a sweet carrot cake, or zucchini bread type loaf–and we may be getting some of that soon too! I do love those types of cake.
But, I was more in the mood today for some type of savory quickbread. Which also put me in mind of some of the savory takes on zucchini bread that I’ve seen and tried–including these awesome muffins from Evergreen Kitchen, which I really need to make again. Those worked great just subbing in a (custom) gluten free flour blend. I decided to include some of the fine corn flour and a little cornmeal for flavor, to eat with some bean soup a while back for a somewhat roundabout Three Sisters approach. I’m sure they’d be at least as good without that additional monkeying.
Anyway, we also happen to have much of a large bag of grated Comté cheese from the same shopping trip. So, a plan started to present itself!
Today’s little baking experiment was also partly inspired by what seems to be an entire genre of carrot oat rolls, which seem to be popular enough here that I keep seeing at least one brand of commercial GF ones in the freezer section. I have yet to try any of them, but may have to try making some of those too before too long. I know rolled oats work great in any kind of quickbread or moist cake like this. May as well up the Swedish inspiration, and go for dill and chive as the herbs here! It should all work together.
Ditto for the walnuts. Chopped nuts are great in sweet carrot or zucchini breads, and I also really enjoy nuts in savory applications. May as well roll with that too.
As it turned out, this bread was absolutely delicious, if not quite as dilly as I expected. (I increased the amount of dill just a little in the written recipe.) It is moist and dense with the oats and carrots, and would be equally great at breakfast time or with a soup or stew. I just snacked on a couple more pieces, and we may finish that loaf off tomorrow.
Savory Carrot Dill Oat Bread with Walnuts
Materials
Wet Ingredients
- 300 ml buttermilk (1.25 cup)
- 2 eggs
- 100 g butter, melted (7 tablespoons cold)
Dry Baking Ingredients
- 80g rolled oats (200ml, or a scant cup)
- 400 ml gluten free flour blend (1.5 cup) – Mine came out to 270g.
- 1.5 teaspoon baking powder
- 1.5 teaspoon xanthan gum
- 0.5 teaspoon baking powder (sodium bicarbonate)
- 0.75 teaspoon table salt
Dry Seasoning Ingredients
- 0.5 teaspoon onion powder
- 0.5 teaspoon garlic powder
- 0.25 teaspoon celery salt
- 0.25 teaspoon cayenne powder not enough for heat, just to help accent the cheese
- 0.25 teaspoon coarsely ground pepper
- 2 teaspoons dried dill
Batter Add-Ins
- 3 medium carrots, coarsely grated (around a scant 2 cups or 450ml)
- 75 g chopped walnuts (0.75 cup, or around 200ml)
- 125 g grated cheese of your choice (350ml or 1.5 cup)
- 1.5 tablespoon fresh or frozen chives, chopped
- 2 teaspoons sesame seeds for on top optional
Instructions
Preparation
- Set the buttermilk and eggs aside to come closer to room temperature before baking.I wasn't sure exactly how much liquid this would want, so I measured out a cup of buttermilk and also had regular milk ready to make up any difference. The written ingredients call for all buttermilk to reflect how much I did end up needing.
- Grate carrots and chop walnuts, and set those aside.
- Preheat the oven to 350℉ / 180℃. Grease the bread pan well with butter. I find that this is an excellent use for squeeze margarine.
- Assemble your dry ingredients. Here, I am using roughly a 50:50 mixture of sorghum flour, and the starch-heavy Finax Red blend to make sure there is plenty of starch to help bind the coarser rolled oats. You can use any flours you prefer, or have ready access to where you live. Quick breads are forgiving.
- Assemble your dry seasoning ingredients.
- Measure out your flour and oats..
- Add the other dry ingredients into the flour,, both leavening/salt/xanthan gum and seasonings. Stir well to combine.
- Place all the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl, and stir to combine.I don't think it's worth hauling out the mixer for a quick batter bread, so I'm just taking the wooden spoon approach. Feel free to use mechanical aids if you prefer.
- Pour in all the wet ingredients.
- Stir well to combine. You're looking for a fairly wet batter at this stage. The oats still need to soak up liquid. The carrot will release some as it cooks, but not as much as the grated zucchini in similar recipes that I'm mainly basing this on. I think this should be good. ¯_ (ツ)_/¯Batter quick breads do tend to be more forgiving than yeast doughs, so it's less critical here.
- Fold in the grated carrot and chopped nuts.
- You want everything well combined, but don't go too nuts (haha!) with the stirring at any point. if you overmix, it will knock the chemical leavening bubbles out.
- Now, do the same with the grated cheese and chives.I am using Comté cheese and frozen chives here, because we happened to have a big bag of grated Comté and some frozen chives. But, you can use any flavorful semi-hard cheese you like. Cheddar, Gruyère, or Gouda would be awesome.Also, any fairly mild fresh herb you prefer. Dill and chive is a classic enough combo here in Sweden that it's also a very popular (and delicious!) potato chip flavor. That's the major reason I did choose this herb combo.
- Once everything is well incorporated, turn the dough into your waiting greased pan.Spread it out somewhat evenly with your spoon, and sprinkle with the optional sesame seeds. Gently pat the seeds down onto the surface of the dough. (Which I hadn't yet done here.)
- Bake in the middle of your preheated oven for 45 minutes. The top should be fairly evenly browned. Test for doneness by poking a toothpick or skewer into the middle. If that doesn't come out clean or it just doesn't feel throughly cooked in the center, test again after another 5 minutes in the oven until it's done.My loaf here took a total of 50 minutes. But, yours may vary depending on your pan, oven, and particular ingredients.
- Take out of the oven, and let rest in the pan for 10-15 minutes.
- Carefully turn out of the pan, and place on a rack to cool. You may need to gently loosen the loaf around the edges with something like a thin spatula. This moist, cheesy loaf wanted to stick to my pan a bit. You could also get around the whole thing by lining the pan with baking paper, which I did not this time.I did, however, put a sheet of it underneath the rack to catch loose seeds and crumbs, and I was glad I did have the forethought to do that!
- Let the loaf cool for at least 30 minutes before cutting into it, or when it just feels a little warm to the touch. This is always the hardest part about baking, especially with something which smells this scrumptious!
- Enjoy! I particularly like this type of bread with a garlic or chive cream cheese, but butter is good too.
