Famous Onion Bread

It’s not just Onion Bread, it’s Famous Onion Bread.  This is another awesome recipe from Matt Amsden’s RAWvolution Recipe Book and I particularly like the added feature of forming the onion bread into little “birds’ nest” shapes as a quiche crust.  More on that later.

First of all, here’s how to make the Famous Onion Bread.

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Famous Onion Bread

6 Yellow Onions (medium to large size)

3 Cups Flax Seed ground into a flour in a high speed blender or food processor

3 Cups Sunflower Seeds ground into a flour in a high speed blender or food processor (if you soak them first, be sure to let them dry so they can be more flour like)

2 Cups Nama Shoyu (raw soy sauce – *see other options below)

1 1/3 Cup Olive Oil

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Peel and halve the onions.  If you have a food processor it’s going to be quickest to use the slicing disk to process the onions into thin slices.  Otherwise get ready to slice and weep.

Put the dry ingredients (flax and sunflower seeds) in a large mixing bowl and sift together until well mixed.  Add the onions, Nama Shoyu and olive oil and mix until thoroughly combined.

Spread evenly on the teflex sheet of a dehydrator tray about 1/4 – 1/2 inch thick.  I usually get about 3.5 trays from this size recipe on my Good4u 10-tray dehydrator.  Dehydrate at 115 degrees F for about 6 hours or until the top is dry to the touch, then flip the teflex sheet over onto the mesh screen and pull of the teflex so that the former underside can now dry.   You can also watch the video of how this is done.

Dehydrate for about another 18 hours or until dry.  I often will cut my bread into squares sometime near the end of that remaining 18 hours so that the pieces can dry more easily.  Cutting with kitchen scissors seems to work best since the onion pieces don’t often break cleanly into one piece without this additional help.

I suggest you store your bread in the refrigerator since the middle might be a bit more moist than a cracker – plus it’s just a good practice.

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* Nama Shoyu is a raw soy sauce, but I just read the ingredients carefully and discovered that it has wheat and soy in it.  Even though the ingredients were organic, I prefer to use those ingredients less since they are so prevalent in our foods these days.  On my search for other options I found Tamari which is wheat free, but not raw and still contains soy.  There’s also Bragg’s Aminos which also contains soy but at least is raw.  And my new favorite, Raw Coconut Aminos which is raw and contains no wheat or soy – just coconut sap and sea salt.  It tastes just the same as Nama Shoyu to me and feels better in my body.  See if you can find some to try.

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What if you don’t have a dehydrator?

Hey! Please try this in your oven and report back!  I’ve heard it’s possible to do a lot of raw recipes that call for dehydration in the oven, but I haven’t tried it (I have a dehydrator) and I’d love to hear what happens for you.  Here are a few tips I suggest you try:

• Put your oven on the lowest setting possible.
• Some say to even keep the oven door open (helps with the flow of air) and turn the oven off and back on again periodically (so it doesn’t get too hot).
• You might get your bread or crackers hotter than 115 degrees.  So you might kill off a few more enzymes than I do in my dehydrator.  It’s still a great way to try out a recipe and find out if you really desire having a dehydrator for such recipes.
• Instead of a teflex sheet I suggest you use wax paper or parchment paper
• Instead of a mesh screen on a dehydrator tray you’ll likely need to use a cookie sheet.  That just means you’re going to need to flip the bread or crackers more often so that they get evenly dry.  Scoring the bread/crackers into squares early in the process will make this easier.
• We have a pizza sheet with holes in it … if you have something like that, use it as it will increase the air flow around your bread/crackers
• Check the bread/crackers more often as it may not take as long to dry at a higher temperature.

And please let me know what happens for you.  Inquiring minds want to know!

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And more pics from my process:

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Oh, and here’s

How to Make Quiche with this Onion Bread Recipe

1. Form the onion bread into mini quiche tart-sized “birds nest” shapes

2. Dehydrate these quiche crusts as usual, including pulling off the teflex about 6 hours in (though this seemed to work best by sliding them off with a spatula onto the mesh screen rather than flipping them over)

3. Make a quiche filling.  Use your imagination.  The onion bread crust is a strong flavor and I found I really liked this mixture:
2 parts frozen spinach
1 part artichoke hearts
1 part sweet onion
Blend or food process all ingredients until thoroughly mixed.

Other filling ideas that would be yummy include mushrooms, tomatoes and any kind of cheesy fillings.  In this picture I did the spinach mixture and topped it with a little bit of the cheese that comes from our “not yer mama’s mac n cheese” recipe.  Oh, and a few sun dried tomatoes on top for extra flavor and prettiness.

4. When you’re ready to eat your quiche, simply put the fillings in the dehydrated crust and dehydrate some more for another hour or so until you reach the desired warmth.

Enjoy!