Courgette & Oat Flour Bread

This bread is super healthy and easy to realise. You can have it as a snack, with some hummus or a delicious soup.

The main ingredients are oat flour (you could also use almond flour, but it's way more expensive), courgette and coconut oil. I used flax eggs but it also works with actual eggs (always buy organic from happy chickens!). A little bit of salt and baking soda. Then, you can add different kinds of spice.

(Read more on this bread from an Ayurvedic perspective below the instructions)

Ingredients

• Coconut oil, 100 ml

• Oat flour, 225g - you can simply grind rolled oats

• Courgette, grated squeezed (about 2 medium ones), 225g

• Flax eggs (2 tbs ground flax seeds + 6 tbs water)

• Sea salt or Himalaya salt, ½ tsp

• Baking soda, 1 tsp

• Optional: coriander powder: 1 tsp

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 180ºC .

Melt the coconut oil and set aside so it can cool down.

Make the flax eggs by combining the ground flax seeds and lukewarm water in a small bowl or cup. Stir and set aside to thicken. (Remember you can also use two actual eggs if you don't have flax seeds).

Grate the courgette in a big bowl. Take a cheese cloth (or a regular kitchen towel), pour the grated courgette into it and start squeezing the courgette above a bowl to capture the courgette water. (You can use the courgette water for a smoothie or as soup stock so don’t discard it!). When no more water is coming out, place the courgette into the big bowl.

Grind the oats to flour, or weigh out your oat flour and pour it into the bowl.

Stir the flax egg once more and add it to the mixture. Add the salt, baking soda and melted coconut oil and combine everything into a dough.

Pour in the dough into a small bread tin (you might want to grease it beforehand). Make sure you push the dough into the corners and press down so it is compact.

Bake for about 45 minutes to 1 hour, or actually until a knife comes out clean.

Let the bread cool completely on a grill before cutting it. This vegan courgette bread freezes really well. You can reheat it in the toaster or just leave it on the countertop for a couple of hours.

Enjoy with some humus, a nice bowl or soup, or just plain as a snack.

Enjoy!

(I don't have a small bread tin - yet- so I used a big one, which made my bread a lot flatter, but exquisite anyway!)

From an Ayurvedic perspective

From an Ayurvedic perspective, courgette are cooling in nature and easy to digest. And because they contain so much water, they are balancing for Pitta and Vata – although we will get rid of some of that water to avoid getting a soggy bread!

Oats

Oats are a sattvic food. They are Vata and Pitta decreasing, but will increase Kapha.

Coconut oil

Coconut oil is cooling and the ideal oil for Pitta. It has anti-inflammatory and many other beneficial properties.

Courgette

Then the Courgette, the stars of the show. They are a great vegetable for Pitta and Vata but it’s also a nightshade (same family as tomatoes, bell peppers and aubergines). So if you have any inflammation in your body going on, you might want to hold one before doing the recipe. You can try it and see how you feel with it!

The vegan Courgette bread is filling but not too heavy and will keep Pitta filled up. For Kapha I would recommend not eating too much of it, but it is definitely lighter than pure seed breads, and we do squeeze out the water from the courgette so it’s not too bad!