Yeasty Apple Pulp Teff Bread

My goal for the month of October was to make traditional Halloween delights such as candies, treats, spooky Bento Box Snapshots, savory meals from all over the world, anything with pumpkin, and so much more. But then Midterms and projects happened. And Graduation and “What am I going to do with my life?” freak-outs kept me preoccupied. So I’ve a week and a day to make up for it.

As you may know, I’m a sucker for a good apple. Our peck and a half of apples we purchased from Hollin Farms lasted us for quite a while, until their bruises were growing and no one wanted to eat them as is. I then had the idea to juice them and use their pulp for something innovative and ingenious. Where that innovation and genius would go, I had no idea.

Earlier this week I started craving bread. Maybe it was Elana’s Paleo pumpkin bread or Amy’s vegan pumpkin bread that had me yearning for a mouthful of a toasted slice of something with butter smeared on top. But I was out of pumpkin puree, though I did have apples to juice. And I wanted a yeasty bread, something that would hold as an open sandwich base, something just as savory as it is sweet, and especially something that incorporated my apple pulp.

Naomi from Straight Into Bed Cakefree and Dried was my inspiration with her carrot pulp bread. I was treated with quite a bit of teff flour a few weeks back, and I wanted to use the molasses flavor it’s famous for. Besides making bagels from time to time, I’d never made true-blue gluten free bread before. Well okay, that’s not true. I did make gluten free bread once. It was way back when I had first started out and cooking mistakes were often and close between.

My first mistake: I cooked by volume. My second mistake: I used coarse rice flour and nothing else. And my third mistake: I used the bread machine without knowing how to use it correctly for gluten free bread. The result was a crusty block of… meh.

But this recipe is nothing like my first flop. It’s rustic, moist, rich, sweet, and yeasty. I do recommend more sea salt than I used, maybe a teaspoon or two more. I was inspired so much by my first ever success with bread baking, I plan on using freshly juiced carrot, maybe with raisins and walnuts like Jim Lahey’s recipe in My Bread.

Yeasty Apple Pulp Teff Bread

12 oz Water
3.5 oz Apple cider (or apple juice)
1 packet of Active Dry Yeast
2 tsp. Sea salt
1 tbsp. (21 g) Honey (to make it vegan, use maple syrup or agave nectar)
15 oz Teff flour
5 oz Tapioca starch
14 oz Apple pulp
4 oz Apple mash, or the concentrate strained from the juice (alternatively, you could use applesauce)

Add the ingredients in a large mixing bowl, and stir either by hand or with a stand mixer and the dough paddle attachment.
Cover the bowl with a kitchen towel and let it sit overnight, up to twenty-four hours for a great rise.
Preheat the oven to 425ºF and place a Dutch oven (or oven-safe deep dish pot) in the center.   
After the oven is preheated, carefully take out the hot pot, grease it, and pour in the dough.
Bake for 10 minutes, and then reduce the heat to 350ºF and bake (covered with a lid) for 30 – 45 minutes.
Remove from the oven and cool.

Makes 1 loaf of bread.