Throughout 2016, I made kilos and kilos of different kinds of hummus for my catering gigs. I don’t think I had seen so many chickpeas in my whole life prior to that. Finns love hummus! But since I am tired of chickpeas now, I started to search for different options when it comes to hummus – and I started experimentations starting with 2017. The first experiment, I made with black-eyed peas (nope, not the band, I’m talking about the legume!) and I must say that I liked it much more than chickpea hummus!

 

 

I always got amused by black-eyed peas – they look so cute with the black spot on their belly. However, I don’t ever remember eating them. I don’t remember my mother cooking them. I even forgot about them. So when I was looking at the legumes section in the market the other day, I suddenly made the decision of this trial. Black-eyed pea hummus is just the same as any other hummus, the basic ingredients are the same, and you just replace chickpeas; easy, n’est-ce pas?

 

After deciding on the hummus type for this recipe, I started thinking about the type of bread to go with it. I want to show many more different kinds of flour for my gluten free thursday recipes this year and that was the starting point. I had a little bit of buckwheat flour that was sitting in its container for a while, and I decided that this was a good time to use it. I also got inspired by an open sandwich I ate recently at Date+Kale in Kamppi, which was made on buckwheat bread.

 

 

If you’ve never heard about buckwheat, don’t worry – the “wheat” part in its name does not mean that it is wheat as we know it. Buckwheat is a fruit seed related to rhubarb and sorrel. Its flowers are very fragrant and hence, very attractive to bees which make special, strongly flavoured and dark honey with them. Buckwheat has many health benefits: it is good for your cardiovascular system (particularly for postmenopausal women), controls blood sugar and lowers the risk of diabetes, prevents gallstones, is protective against breast cancer and so on..

 

 

 

And yet, this bread (I adapted the recipe from anythonysgoods.com), which uses only 5 ingredients, was not exactly suitable for my taste I have to say. It was a bit too aromatic and not in a good way. Therefore, I added some sunflower seeds in my second trial, and that adjusted the taste just fine. So, if you find buckwheat flavour too strong like me, use seeds (you can even make a mixture of different seeds) but you can also make this bread perfectly without any seeds if you like it.

 

If you want to make open sandwich like I did here, there are many options of course, but I found that sun-dried tomatoes added a nice light taste to this quite dense combination. You can top with any other thing you like – roasted paprika can work too for example, just creates a different taste. Hope you enjoy this recipe! And fingers crossed for a better 2017!
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Ingredients:

 

Difficulty: ★☆☆ (Easy)
(makes 1 small loaf of bread and a humble amount of hummus for 4 people)

 

Printable PDF-recipe (no photos)

 

For bread:
6 dl + 5 tbsp / 2.5 cups + 5 tbsp / 400 gr buckwheat flour (tattarijauho in Finnish)
2 1/4 tsp baking soda
2 1/4 tsp salt
3 dl / 1 1/4 cups / 60 gr sunflower seeds (or another seeds you like)
3 dl / 1 1/4 cups almond milk (you can use water instead)
1.5 dl / 15 tbsp olive oil

 

For hummus (adapted from Kalyn’s Kitchen):
1 can / 400 gr (net weight 240 gr) black eye peas
1 big garlic clove, crushed (makes about 1 tsp crushed garlic)
3 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp olive oil
scant 1/2 tsp ground cumin (meaning: a bit less than 1/2 tsp)
3 tbsp tahini
water to thin hummus, if you want (I didn’t use any, I like hummus thick)
olive oil, drizzled on hummus while serving (optional)
sumac, to sprinkle on hummus while serving (optional)

 

Sun-dried tomatoes to make an open sandwich

 

 

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First let’s make the bread:

 

1. Preheat the oven to 180C.

 

2. Keep some of the sunflower seeds aside to spread on the bread. Put the dry ingredients (buckwheat flour, baking soda, salt and the rest of sunflower seeds) in a bowl and mix.

 

 

 

 

 

3. Add almond milk (or water) and olive oil. Whisk well. Using a whisk works well, it’s not going to be a thick dough that you can knead. Just make sure that all the dry ingredients are mixed with wet ingredients.

 

 

 

 

4. Cover the bowl with a lid or stretch film and set aside. Let it rest for 15-20 minutes. It will get thicker at that time.

 

 

5. Once the dough and oven are ready, put the dough in a loaf pan that is greased (I used olive oil for that) and lined with baking paper. Smoothen the surface a little and spread the seeds you put aside. Bake in the middle rack of the oven for 45-50 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

 

 

 

 

6. Once the bread is ready and out of the oven, let it sit for at least half hour (up to an hour) in the loaf pan to let it thicken completely before taking it out.

 

 

Now let’s make hummus (errm, quite easy really, just 1 step!):

 

7. Put all the ingredients in a food processor and process until smooth. Add some water to thin it up if you prefer. To serve, drizzle some olive oil and sprinkle sumac on top (optional).

 

 

 

 

To make the open sandwich:

 

8. Spread some black-eye pea hummus on a slice of buckwheat bread. Put some sun-dried tomato slices on top, sprinkle sumac on top. Enjoy!