I did not set out to make Ezekiel bread. I set out to use up a bag of soup mix.
But somewhere between soaking the pulses and pulling a tray of muffins out of the oven, I realised I had made something very close to what Ezekiel made. Just with a Yorkshire accent.
What Ezekiel Made
In Ezekiel 4:9, God tells the prophet:
Take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt; put them in a storage jar and use them to make bread for yourself.
That is the original recipe. Six ingredients. No yeast mentioned, no honey, no shortcuts.
It was survival bread. Bread for a siege.
Bread made to keep a man alive when nothing else was available.
Traditional Ezekiel bread today still follows that idea. The grains and pulses are sprouted, then ground, then baked. Sprouting makes them easier to digest, and mixing grains and legumes together gives you a complete protein. It is dense, nutty, filling, and it is not trying to be fluffy white bread. It is trying to keep you going.
What I Made
My version started with a bag of soup mix from the shop, not a storage jar of six separate grains. But look at what is in it:
My Dewsbury Stew Bread, full mix:
Pulses:
Barley
Peas
Lentils
Adzuki beans
Seeds:
Brown linseed
Golden linseed
Sesame seeds
Raw buckwheat
Sunflower seeds
Pumpkin seeds
Hulled millet
The rest:
100g dried veg mix
200g drained veg stew
230g spelt flour
2.5 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp honey
No yeast. No kneading. No waiting for a rise. Just soak, blitz, fold, bake.
The Ratios, So You Can Make It Too
I weighed everything, so this is repeatable:
300g dry soup mix, soaked for 24 hours, weighed 913g after soaking
100g seed mix
100g dried veg mix
200g drained stew veg
230g spelt flour
40g honey
Total dry weight: 970g
Total wet weight after soaking: about 1,583g
For every 100g of spelt, use 130g dry soup mix and 87g drained stew veg. In simple numbers, that is 30 to 20 to 23 for soup mix to stew veg to spelt.
Bake at 170C. 30 minutes as a loaf, 18 to 22 minutes as muffins in a muffin tin. That makes 14 muffins at about 112g each.
The Comparison
Ezekiel Bread:
Grains and pulses: Wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, spelt
Seeds: None in the original
Method: Sprouted, ground, yeast-risen
Liquid: Water
Sweetness: None
Flavour: Nutty, plain
Shape: Loaf
Bake: Long, slow loaf bake
Keeps: 3 to 4 days
My Dewsbury Mix:
Grains and pulses: Barley, peas, lentils, adzuki beans, plus spelt
Seeds: Brown and golden linseed, sesame, raw buckwheat, sunflower, pumpkin, hulled millet
Method: Soaked, blitzed, baking powder risen
Liquid: Water from soaking, plus stew veg
Sweetness: 2 tbsp honey
Flavour: Savoury, beef stock, stew veg
Shape: Muffin tin portions
Bake: 170C, 18 to 22 minutes
Keeps: 3 to 4 days
The Nutrition, Full Mix
This is where my mix pulls ahead of shop-bought Ezekiel. These are estimates from standard nutrition tables, but they show the real story.
Where it comes from:
Soup mix, 300g: 1,030 kcal, 59.1g protein, 48.3g fibre, 3.9g fat
Seed mix, 100g: 501 kcal, 18.5g protein, 14.2g fibre, 34.6g fat
Dried veg, 100g: 310 kcal, 9.0g protein, 14.0g fibre, 1.2g fat
Spelt, 230g: 777 kcal, 33.6g protein, 24.6g fibre, 5.5g fat
Stew veg, 200g: 90 kcal, 3.0g protein, 5.0g fibre, 2.0g fat
Honey, 40g: 122 kcal, 0.1g protein, 0.1g fibre, 0.0g fat
Total batch: 2,830 kcal, 123.3g protein, 106.2g fibre, 47.2g fat
Per 100g dry:
Calories: 292 kcal
Protein: 12.7g
Carbs: 52.1g
Fibre: 10.9g
Fat: 4.9g
Sugar: 8.5g
Per muffin, 14 muffins:
Calories: 202 kcal
Protein: 8.8g
Carbs: 36.1g
Fibre: 7.6g
Fat: 3.4g
Sugar: 5.9g
Shop Ezekiel is typically about 200 to 250 kcal, 8 to 10g protein, 5 to 6g fibre, and 1 to 2g fat per 100g.
Mine is higher in fibre, 10.9g, and higher in healthy fat, 4.9g, because of the seeds. That fibre number is the headline. 106g of fibre in one batch. 7.6g in one muffin. That is nearly a quarter of your daily fibre in one muffin.
What The Pulses And Seeds Do Together
Pulses: barley, peas, lentils, adzuki beans.
This is the backbone. 59.1g protein and 48.3g fibre from the pulses alone. The adzuki beans are the secret. They push the protein up from 15g per 100g in a normal soup mix to 19.7g per 100g in mine. Pulses give you slow-release carbs and keep you full, but on their own they are missing one amino acid, methionine.
Seeds: linseed, sesame, buckwheat, sunflower, pumpkin, hulled millet.
This is where the complete protein comes from. The seeds add the methionine that pulses lack, so pulses plus seeds plus spelt together make a complete protein. That is the exact same trick as Ezekiel bread, just with seeds doing the extra work.
Each seed has its own job:
Brown and golden linseed: Omega-3, lignans, and the most fibre. They keep the crumb moist.
Sesame seeds: Calcium and iron. Your mineral seed.
Raw buckwheat: Not wheat at all. It is a seed, and it is a complete protein on its own. This is what makes my bread closest to true Ezekiel, because Ezekiel used millet and buckwheat-type grains.
Sunflower seeds: Vitamin E, selenium, and crunch. They stay crunchy even after baking.
Pumpkin seeds: Zinc, magnesium, and the highest protein of all my seeds, 30.2g per 100g.
Hulled millet: The Ezekiel seed. Millet is named in Ezekiel 4:9. It is low fat, easy to digest, and gives a golden, slightly sweet crumb. It is the seed that ties your mix directly back to the original verse.
Almost all the fat in the batch, 34.6g out of 47.2g, comes from the seeds. It is the good kind of fat, the kind that keeps you going for 4 hours, not the kind that sits heavy.
Spelt:
Spelt is the glue. It holds the pulses and seeds together, and it adds another 33.6g protein and 24.6g fibre. Without it, you would have a crumbly pulse cake. With it, you get a sliceable muffin.
Dried veg, stew veg, honey:
Dried veg adds vitamins A and C, potassium, and bulk fibre. Stew veg adds flavour and moisture for only 90 kcal for 200g. Honey adds 122 kcal and browning, but almost no nutrition. If I am honest, honey is flavour, not nutrition.
What Is The Same, What Is Different
The heart of it is the same. Grains plus pulses. That is the secret in Ezekiel, and it is the secret in mine.
On their own, grains are missing something. Pulses are missing something else. Put them together and they complete each other. You get a bread that actually fills you up, not a bread that leaves you hungry an hour later.
Both are dense. Both are honest. Both are bread that was made to sustain, not to impress.
And both are made from what you have in the cupboard. Ezekiel used what was in the jar. I used what was in the bag.
My mix now has millet in it, just like Ezekiel's mix did. I did not plan it. I just bought a seed mix with millet in it. But it means my Dewsbury bread and Ezekiel's bread share two named ingredients, barley and millet, plus spelt and lentils.
The difference is sprouting versus soaking. Ezekiel sprouted his grains. I soaked mine. Sprouting takes days and planning. Soaking takes a bowl and a night of patience. Mine is the shortcut version, but it gets you to the same place: softened pulses, easier to digest, ready to bake.
Ezekiel used plain water. I used stew veg. That is where Dewsbury comes in. I folded in a ladle of drained stew, pork taken out. It gave the muffins a savoury depth you do not get from plain Ezekiel bread. It tasted like gravy and harvest had been baked into the crumb.
And Ezekiel made a loaf for a siege. I made muffins for portion control. Fourteen little loaves, each about 112g, each one perfectly toasted with pate or dipped in stew. Same idea, just in a muffin tin.
Why It Matters To Me
There is something holy about making bread from almost nothing.
Ezekiel was told to make bread in a time of scarcity. I made bread in a time when the cupboards looked a bit bare and the soup mix had been sitting there too long. Different centuries, same lesson: God provides in the jar, in the bag, in the ladle of leftover stew.
I did not sprout anything. I did not pray over the dough, although I should have. I just mixed what I had and put it in the oven. And it came out golden, firm, and good.
It tasted great warm. It tasted even better the next day, toasted, with the stew it came from.
The Last Word
Ezekiel's bread kept a prophet alive in a siege. My bread kept me fed on a Wednesday night in Dewsbury, with pate on top and stew on the side.
Different bread. Same God. Same provision.
If you have soup mix in the cupboard, you have Ezekiel bread waiting to happen. You just have to soak it.
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