June 2, 2013
(last updated November 3, 2020) 
This has been a month of travel. Aside from the usual back and forth between DC and New York, there was a west coast adventure at Vida Vegan last week. Time spent away from home means 1) less time creating things in my kitchen 2) a greater need for portable snacks. The following recipe for apple flax flatbread emerged from my delight at being reunited with my kitchen appliances last week and my desire to have something crispy to bring with me to New York this past weekend. While not much different from normal flax bread in terms of procedure, the addition of apple and cinnamon makes this bread just a little savory/sweet, which I love.
Any kind of apple will work in this recipe. I used Fuji because they’re one of my favorites, and they’re still available at my local farmer’s market. I would imagine that any sweet apple will taste similar in the recipe. For flax crackers, I prefer using golden to dark brown flax seeds, but this isn’t a hard and fast preference at all. Either type will work.
I did my best to test an oven variation for this recipe; I tried baking for 30 minutes at 300 degrees, but the result was still a bit mushy. I think what might work is if you bake at 45 minutes at 300, allowing it to brown a little, and spreading the flatbread thinner than I suggest for the dehydrator version. That said, I hate to give instructions for a recipe variation that I have not tested myself, so if you do attempt to bake the flatbread, please take my suggestion with a grain of salt! If anyone reading knows of a foolproof way to bake flax crackers, I’d be very curious to hear it. In the meantime, the tried-and-true version of this recipe is dehydrator only…for now.
Raw, Vegan Apple and Flax Flatbread (gluten free, soy free)
Author -Ingredients
- 2 fuji apples or any other sweet variety, one cut into large cubes, the other grated
- 1 3/4 cups water
- 3 tbsp flax meal
- 1/4 tsp sea salt or to taste
- 1 tbsp maple syrup
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1 cup golden flax seeds
- 2 tbsp chia seeds
- 1/2 cup pumpkin seeds
Instructions
- Blend the cubed apple, the water, the flax meal, the salt, the syrup, and the cinnamon in a blender till smooth.
- Pour mixture over the flax and chia seeds in a large bowl. Allow to site for three hours (or more is fine, too), till the mixture is thick and viscous. Stir in the grated apple and the pumpkin seeds.
- Spread the mixture onto a Teflex-lined dehydrator sheet. It should be just shy of 1/4” thick.
- Dehydrate at 115 degrees overnight (6-8 hours). Place another Teflex sheet on top of the flatbread, then gingerly invert the two and peel the original sheet off the bottom of the crackers. Score into 6-8 pieces and continue to dehydrate for another 3-4 hours, or until very crispy.
Serve as sandwich bread, as a snack, or however you like! My favorite way to serve the bread at the moment is spread with a layer of almond butter and thinly sliced apples. So. Good.
Flax crackers/flatbreads are one of my favorite raw food recipes, and I don’t make them often enough. This was a good reminder to create them more often. Excited to polish off the last of the batch! Hope you enjoy it, too.
xo
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Hi, this looks amazing and healthy flatbread but how to substitute maple syrum and salt?
Oh, thank you very much for posting this! It is going to help me when I research Golden Flax Seeds at the store! So Outstanding!
i am learning about raw foods. I was wondering if this recipe can be modified for a 9 tray excalibur dehydrator?
Sure! You could double the recipe and put it in the 9 tray.
I do not have a dehydrating machine. Can I do this in an oven instead?
This reminds me of a raw apple pie, which is amazing. Love this idea! Thanks Gena ๐
Wow! I absolutely love this blog.
Raw Food for Beauty all the way is my motto! I appreciate all of your recipes on this blog. It shows that being healthy and choosing a raw diet can be easier than you think!
I think I’ll definitely go out and get some flaxbread now, look delectable!
Thanks for the post <3
I’ve never made my own flax crackers despite loving them so much, and I love that this is a sweet version! I’m going to have to try this soon, especially since all of the apples I’ve been finding lately seem to be a bit meals. It won’t matter once they’re part of this delicious snack. Thanks for the recipe!
sounds terrific! and full of such nutritious ingredients!
I have always thought you can’t digest flaxseeds without grinding them first, so do the whole flaxseeds in this recipe (1 cup, the vast majority of them) pass through your digestive tract unabsorbed? Seems like such a waste of a pricey, nutritious ingredient! Maybe I am wrong though. Please explain!
I think I recall Gena answering this question some months ago. She said while it’s true that you can’t swallow flax seeds whole like chia and still get the nutrients, you can chew very thoroughly and prevent them passing right through.
Funny story, I told my husband to come check out your recipes to find something new he’d like to try. He got stuck on flatbread and pretty much the search stopped there. He was practically drooling on the keyboard. I had to remind him that we don’t have a dehydrator (or a working oven) right now, but I have a feeling after our move in a few weeks he will be ordering us a dehydrator just so we can make your flatbread recipes!
Gena,
I hope you have enjoyed your adventures! It sounds like you had a wonderful time!
Thank you for this recipe! I am breaking out the dehydrator to make some flax crackers and I will add this to my garlic and salt flax crackers.
You are a gem!
Star
In addition to, not all together. HA!
One of the reasons I love reading your blog so (and one of the reasons I adore you so much) is just how relatable you are, Gena. I also loved reuniting with my kitchen appliances last week after getting home from VVC, I just relished that moment when I realized I had everything I needed at my fingertips and how comforting that was and how fortunate I am. I love the simplicity of the sandwich you created with your lovely flatbread recipe and I had to giggle because I also featured Fuji apples on my blog today. I think we might be simpatico in many ways. ๐
I’m so excited to try making these! I neglected my dehydrator over the winter and I’m trying to get back in the habit of using it. The texture of these looks great and I love the subtle sweetness!
Looks great Gena. I need to buy a dehydrator!
Totally agree with your comments on food combining. These “rules” just do not ring true for me. I eat fruit with carbs and protein and never seem to have digestive issues.
can you use an oven if you don’t have a dehydrator?
Hi Jessica,
I address that in the third graf of the post…I tried it in the oven without much luck, but you could definitely experiment with a longer cook time than I did. If you have any luck, let me know!
G
oops! missed that – sorry! thanks, i’ll keep you posted ๐
These look like a tasty healthy snack which can be hard to find! Thanks for sharing the recipe and your tips on different cooking variations as I do not have a dehydrator so your thoughts on this are very helpful. Thanks.
Your photography of the flatbread is beautiful! The recipe reminds me of graham crackers since it includes cinnamon and maple syrup; I can’t wait to try it! I’ll have to experiment with oven temperatures and times, though, which should be interesting. ๐ Thanks for the recipe, Gena.
Thank you, Elisabeth!
These sound really awesome! A perfect breakfast or snack. I rarely break out the dehydrator unless it’s really worth, but these do sound like the perfect excuse. How do you think they’d be with savory toppings?
What a fab recipe…..apples, seeds, maple syrup…mmmmmmm!!! ๐
I, too, see this recipe as a reminder for me to make more raw crackers. They look delicious and I love the green flecks of pepitas!
Ah, I’m craving an apple with nut butter now. Fuji apples are my favorite, too. I’ve become a pro when picking them out, and can always tell when it’s a good batch. I have a bag of them sitting in my fridge right now! I haven’t been eating them with nut butter because I’ve been trying to adhere to the food combining rule of only eating fruit on an empty stomach. Obviously you don’t abide by this, and I always appreciate your knowledge, so how do you feel about it? It’s a tough one for me, because I love an apple with nut butter! Your flax flatbread looks like an awesome vehicle for that combo. (Once again, I wish I owned a dehydrator.)
You mean, what are my thoughts on food combining? Well, I was a huge proponent of it when my blog started–in part because I’m very susceptible to being dazzled by rules. There is no science to support the majority of food combining claims; while it’s true that we use different enzymes to digest proteins vs. carbs vs. fats, the idea that we need to eat these foods separately is not true. Our bodies are designed to digest all of these foods at once, our digestive enzymes working in harmony as a ball of chyme (masticated food that’s been churn up in our stomachs) moves from our stomachs into the upper small intestine. “Light” foods do not “wait” and ferment behind heavier ones; everything gets churned up together, moves together, and is then broken down and assimilated as needed by our bodies. We’re perfectly capable of producing amylases and proteases as needed, in response to different macronutrients, regardless of whether we eat them at the same time or three hours apart. Fruit may feel “light” to us because it’s so rich in water, but it’s totally fine to eat it along with other foods. There may even be some benefits to doing this; the Vitamin C in an orange, for example, can help to make the iron in lentils and sautรฉed spinach more bioavailable.
I learned a few useful things about how different foods affect me through food combining, but in truth my flirtation with it was mostly a convenient excuse for me to limit and restrict what I was eating. It prevented me from enjoying a lot of my favorite combinations of food (like apples and nut butter!) and probably limited the nutrient balance of my meals on the whole, since I wasn’t “allowed” to eat proteins with carbs, etc. If it helps you to eat simply overall, that’s great, but most information out there about food combining is pseudoscientific, and disregards the incredible efficiency and marvelous complexity of the human digestive system ๐
I hope this helps, Jenni, and that you enjoy your beloved combo of apples and nut butters soon!
this is a great and thoughtful response, and it really hits home for me. thanks!
I’m so glad, Keri. Hope it helps!
I once read an interview with Dr Deepak Chopra and he said that “food combining is a gimmick”. So true, and as you say there is no science to back it up, but yet so many ‘health gurus’ are still claiming it’s benefits. What people are experiencing when they food combine is actually food restriction, they feel better and believe its the result of combining. Having said that a lot of people especially over 40yrs have low HCL and enzymes and these are worth supplementing to aid digestion. So glad you are stamping out the myths perpetuated by pop nutrition proponents. Food combining is so 1980’s!!