I had never considered making bread out of coconut butter until I read a GAPS diet cookbook. GAPS is a therapeutic diet intended to reseal the lining of the gut among its other intended purposes. I’ve been curious to pull elements from GAPS as the saga of mysterious poor health is dragging into its fourth month. Since my last update, my flareups turned bad to the point that even the little bit of carbohydrate I could tolerate had to be removed again. Adieu, butternut squash pancakes. I finally got some lab work back that indicated dysbiosis, high immune and autoimmune markers, and a slew of other imbalances. In short, I know that my immune system is hypersensitive and the mission is to figure out why.

My original diagnosis was a candida overgrowth. However, no candida showed up on a GI-Map test. While it left my M.D. puzzled, I’m convinced that some kind of pathogen is still living in a biofilm somewhere in my gut. Whether it’s candida causing my immune system upregulation or not, an opportunistic something-or-other is feeding on carbohydrates and causing flareup reactions when I eat them.

I’ve been eating coconut flour for the past few weeks with no worsening flareups because it obviously isn’t a grain that converts into a sugar upon digestion. However, coconut flour is quite fibrous. An already leaky gut that needs to reseal itself doesn’t love a low-fat fiber roughing things up. This is where the coconut butter idea came in as suggested by the GAPS practitioner who wrote the cookbook.

Baking hasn’t been my favorite activity while the list of foods I can eat safely narrows. I know it’s temporary, but it’s a huge bonus that this grain-free bread is wildly easy to make. Because of the high fat content, it even toasts nicely and tastes divine with sweet or savory toppings.

Ingredients

• 2 cups coconut butter, melted

• 10 eggs

• 1 teaspoon baking soda

• 1 teaspoon sea salt

Method

Preheat oven to 350°F and line a standard loaf pan with parchment paper.

Combine all ingredients in a food processor, blender, or stand mixer until smooth. Pour batter into the prepared pan and bake for 50 - 55 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean from the center.

Because this uses a lot of coconut butter, buying ingredients in bulk online is useful. A 5lb bucket of organic coconut butter on amazon is a fraction of the cost of jars at the grocer, just saying!