Quinoa Bread

📜 Origin & History

Pan de Quinoa (English: Quinoa Bread; Quechua: Quinua T'anta) is an Andean bread made from quinoa flour (Chenopodium quinoa) or a mixture of quinoa flour and wheat flour: the bread has a slightly earthy, nutty note and is more protein-rich than conventional wheat bread. Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa; Quechua: Quinua or Jupha) is one of the oldest cultivated plants of the Andes: it was cultivated over 7,000 years ago in the high Andean regions of Peru, Bolivia, and Chile. The Incas called quinoa 'chisiya mama' ('Mother of all Grains') and revered it as food of the gods: after the Spanish conquest in the 16th century, colonizers attempted to suppress quinoa cultivation and replace it with wheat — but quinoa survived in remote high Andean communities. It was not until the 1990s that quinoa became internationally known: NASA studied quinoa as an ideal astronaut food due to its complete amino acid profile (all 9 essential amino acids). Pan de Quinoa is a modern baking product in Peru and Bolivia: it is offered in bakeries, markets, and health food stores in Lima, Cusco, and La Paz. Quinoa contains no saponins in ground flour (after washing) and is therefore gluten-like but gluten-free — for people with gluten intolerance, Pan de Quinoa is a natural alternative. In Germany, quinoa flour is available in organic stores and supermarkets.