Easy Oil Free Bread (4 Ingredients)
This oil free bread recipe doesn’t get much easier, which is great because we’re on quarantine here in Olón Ecuador without reliable access to vegan bread.
Most bread in this part of Ecuador is made with manteca, which is either vegetable or pig lard and we don’t eat either of those. There is an organic bakery in Olón that doesn’t use manteca, but they haven’t been open regularly and are often out of bread when we go.
The tiendas here in Olón have plenty of harina (flour) so I (this is JP) decided to take my chances making our own bread and it came out great!
Sadly, we haven’t found any whole wheat flour in any of the tiendas in this area, and we didn’t think to buy any last time we were at SuperMaxi in Salinas. It’s on the list now!
Luckily, we did have some active dry yeast on hand that we bought back in Cuenca to make pizza dough. While we haven’t looked for it yet, it was hard to find in Cuenca and we haven’t noticed it here either. Hopefully we can find it because I have a feeling we’ll be eating a lot of this bread!
The third ingredient is a little salt, which is needed for the dough to rise properly. And the last ingredient is warm water! Easy peasy!
HINT: We also like to add 2 teaspoons of garlic powder to our bread to give it some extra flavor. You can also try adding other seasonings like basil or oregano, or even some minced black olives or beets. Get creative and let us know how it turns out in the comments!
It only takes about 10 minutes to prepare the dough, but it needs to sit for 2 hours before you bake it and it needs to cool for a bit before you can cut into it. That means it takes closer to 3 hours total from mix to munch, so take that into account when you’re planning your baking time.
IMPORTANT: The key to getting a golden brown, extra crispy crust is to put some water in a baking dish on the bottom rack. I forgot it one time and the bread came out looking like a giant biscuit, and it stuck to the pan. Just be careful when you open the oven or you might get a steam burn! ¡No bueno!
Let’s get started!