Keto rolls and bagels

It is amazing what can be done with faux substitute ingredients nowadays. I've previously had some bread and rolls made by a local 'low carb' company specializing in keto products called "We Love Low Carb" and the baked goods product range is truly outstanding -  bread (sourdough and CY), buns, bagels, pies, pitas, wraps, pizza bases, and why not have hot cross buns as well!

I'm always into exploring what makes products tick, and this bake was mostly about learning more about how these modern miracles of food technology work.

With that in mind, I baked some rolls and bagels using a bag of their all purpose flour mix. The bag of their flour mix lists the following ingredients: sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, oats, almond/macadamia nuts and vital gluten. In other words, what we have here seems to be the use of low carbohydrate seeds and nuts (except for the oats, which I wouldn't count as low carbohydrate, right?) and the magic ingredient that allows for a bread texture and makes this suitable for so many different kinds of breads would be vital gluten. It is interesting, and notable that flax seeds aren't listed as an ingredient, and in reviews of the product people seem to regard this as a positive thing! Perhaps people are tired of the taste if they're on a diet where this is a major constituent.

The bag contains a brief recipe: "500g of we love low carb flour, 300g water, 15g yeast, 14g salt, 30g sweetener. Mix all together for 12-15 mins. Let rise then bake for 40 mins at 160C". A couple of things are noticeable - a lot of yeast and salt. And more emphasis on the mixing than on how long you should leave it to rise! Rather cheekily the recipe leaves the sweetener up to you, which could be a source of carbs or artificial sweeteners, I guess (I used agave syrup for this).

In the initial mix with a Danish whisk, it felt and looked like a gluten free bread, and that had me fooled at first.

In fact, I left it for 10 minutes before using my Kenwood as I was treating this similar to a gluten free bread. But, the mixing is essential, and this is the opposite of a gluten free bread, there is a lot of gluten here. The strangest thing is that after mixing for 10 minutes on the dough hook it developed a really tight elastic ball of dough. So tight that it was very difficult to remove from the dough hook, I've never struggled as much to remove a ball of dough from my dough hook as with this bake.

I made both rolls and bagels. The bagels were boiled, because to me a bagel has to be boiled. The dough could handle the boiling treatment acceptably well, although you do have to be gentle with your handling when you're seeding the boiled bagels as they're softer than with normal bagels and do deform easily.

And there was a lot of lovely oven spring. Nice browning on top. Beautiful texture and crumb. Flavour-wise it tastes like the ingredients, not as nice as real bread, but the texture can fool your mouth.

An interesting experience overall and one I'd recommend if you were on a carb restricted diet.