No bread is an island

...entire of itself. (With apologies to John Donne!)
I live and breathe breadmaking. I’m an evangelist who would like everyone to make his or her own bread. I want to demystify breadmaking and show it as the easy everyday craft that it is. To this end I endeavour to make my recipes as simple and as foolproof as I possibly can.

I call my blog 'No bread is an island' because every bread is connected to another bread. So a spicy fruit bun with a cross on top is a hot cross bun. This fruit dough will also make a fruit loaf - or Chelsea buns or a Swedish tea ring...
I'm also a vegan, so I have lots of vegan recipes on here - and I'm adding more all the time.

Thursday 2 August 2012

Healthy fruit and oat bar

Ingredients:
50g wholemeal flour
50g oatmeal
50g each chopped dates, prunes and sultanas
50g broken cashew nuts
40g sesame and sunflower seeds
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 heaped teaspoon mixed spice
75ml apple juice

Method:
1. Put the frying pan on low
2. Mix the spice in with the dry ingredients
3. Add the liquid and mix into a dough
4. Knead a few times to ensure the ingredients are mixed properly
5. Form into round and roll out into a circle as big as your frying pan – mine is about 22-25cm
6. Place in frying pan and turn the heat onto moderately low. Put lid on frying pan. (Or cover with a baking tray.)
7. Set timer for 8 minutes.
8. Turn over very carefully – it can be a bit fragile at this stage – and set timer for another 8 minutes.
9. Turn heat down to low and leave for another 7 minutes with lid off. Repeat with the other side.
10. Place on cooling tray for several minutes, then trim the edges and cut it into 6 bars, roughly 50g each, measuring roughly 10cm by 4.

Notes:
They should be very crisp on the outside, slightly soft in the middle and hold their shape well.
The calorie count for the flour and oats – total 328 – is around 50.
I haven’t bothered to count the calories for the rest of the ingredients because they count towards your 5-a-day.

They contain:
No added fat
No refined sugar
No yeast

You can play around with this recipe as much as you want. Provided you keep to 100g of flour and around 75ml of liquid.
I think these are great for a mid-morning snack. The only problem I can see is restricting yourself to only 1 bar at a time!


I first made these a couple of years ago, and started a thread about them on the BBC Food message boards. Quite a few people came back and said how much they'd enjoyed them - check out the variations in msg Nr 12.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Paul, I followed your link from The Fresh Loaf. I'm very interested in trying this recipe but would love to see a photo of the finished bars so I know what I'm going for. If it's possible to add one to this post, thank you in advance! Either way, thanks for posting this recipe.

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  2. Hi Anne (I followed the link back to your website - very interesting!)

    I haven't got a photo yet, but the very next time I bake a batch, I'll make sure I take a pic.

    In the meantime, take a look at what others have said about it (I should include this link in my post):

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbfood/F2670471?thread=5395663&show=100

    Best wishes, Paul

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