I'm not quite sure what flax meal is - could be the same. I usually grind flax seeds in a coffee grinder (or magic bullet) until they are a powder. I've had my bread turn out both ways (pliable and crisp) on different occasions. I prefer a bit softer, which appears to be related to how thick you make your bread and how long it is dehydrated. I usually opt for a bit thicker.

Lucy: What sort of carrots did you use? Pulp? Shredded? Thanks!

Sorry about earlier blank message. When you grind the seeds, should it resemble powder or should there be pieces of seeds? Is flax meal the same as ground flax seed? Should the bread be pliable or crisp?

Instead of onion,I made it with carrot and that was delicious !!!

I loved the bread but cut the nama shoya way down. It was still a bit too salty for me. The texture and the way it really holds together are wonderful! Thanks!!

I find that my onion bread always turns out a bit different! If you aren't loving the taste, try playing around with the quantities. Too oniony for you? Use less onions. You can also add water, more oil or more Nama Shoyu to change the consistency.

If I think about, about 6 hours into the drying process, I'll also take out my bread and spread it around a bit more to be sure I've covered most of the gaps. I've also tried blending half of the onion with the rest of the more liquid ingredients, but didn't love the outcome.

I have a double batch of the bread in my dehydrator right now. Just a few hours into dehydrating and the whole house smells delicious!

I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE this bread! I receive the weekly boxes from RAWvolution and would always eat the servings that included the bread first. I just attempted to make this the other day and IT ACTUALLY CAME OUT RIGHT! That speaks VOLUMES for my culinary skills, which are questionable to begin with. I have a food processor called The Miracle Mincer which only has an S blade and was scared that the onion 'mush' would destroy the recipe, but it didn't. I was purposely cutting the onion as thin as possible, as I am recovering from all 4 Wisdom teeth being extracted. I had this with some of Matt's Eggless Egg Salad from my RAWvolution box and was in heaven! You guys should certainly invest in his cookbook; the most flavorful raw food that I have experienced by far!

This was so great, and so easy to make! I love having this around for a quick snack, dipped in hummus. Yum.

For this recipe, I'll soak the sunflowers for an hour or so if I remember ahead of time (which is actually rare). I believe with flax, you soak equal parts flax to water for 8 hours when you do soak them. But, with recipes that call for grinding (like this one), you wouldn't soak them. There's a really good chart in the book _Rainbow Green Live-Food Cuisine_ with soaking times, etc. The chart talks about soaking pecans, however, and I've been told recently not to. I've been curious about these questions as well, so I added a question about "soaking nuts":http://goneraw.com/forums/2/topics/10 in general to the forums.

Okay, this may sound stupid, but I'm new to making raw dishes so I might as well ask...do the flax and sunflower seeds need to be soaked first?

I have to agree, this recipe is infintely variable, and equally as tasty! It is definately a staple of mine now, i made my first batch yesterday and it was half gone before it was even done dehydrating! I think next time i may use less onion, less nama shoyu, and instead use some herbs and sun dried tomatoes.

Here's a slightly modified version that has been going around on the RawFoodTalk Forum. As you'll see, it requires much less dehydrating time so you'll be able to savour it faster.

THE famous Onion bread

2 1/2 lbs sweet onions, peeled
1 cup ground sunflower seeds
1 cup ground golden flax seeds
1/2 cup olive oil
3 oz. Nama Shoyu

Put onions in food processor with 's' blade and process until small pieces, (but not mush). Put in mixing bowl with the other ingredients and mix thoroughly. The flax will absorb liquid. Smooth onto teflex sheets* about 1/4" thick and place in dehydrator for 5 hours, turning over for another 3-4 hours or until dry and crispy. Either break into pieces or cut with a pizza cutter, and store in refrigerator in an airtight container.

*If you don't have an Excalibur dehydrator, any type will do - just use natural unbleached parchment paper instead of the teflex sheets.

Carmella's note: I've been replacing the oil with a mixture of (roughly) 1/4 avocado, 2 tbs olive oil and water whipped up in the FP to obtain 1/2 cup and it works fabulously! I also cut down on the Nama Shoyu quite a bit.

This recipe is extremely flexible. You can transform it into a more cracker-like version by omitting the oil and using various seeds. Here's Mel's version also posted on RFT:

1 cup ground flax
1/3 cup whole flax
1/2 cup ground sesame
1/3 cup whole sesame
1/2 cup pumpkin seeds
2 lbs. onions (I'll try putting only 1 onion next time as I find that the onion flavor seems somewhat stronger than with the original version for some reason!)

No oil, no salt.

Both versions are delish! I agree completely! This recipe is addictive! It has become a staple in our house.

Laurie, These ideas are really helpful - thank you. If you do make the "focaccia" bread, I'd love to see a recipe as I'd be lost as to how to go about this one, but boy does it sound yummy.

This is a great recipe because of its simplicity and because it just BEGS for "try it in a million different ways" and because it inspires creativity. I first made it yesterday. I didn't have yellow onions so I used red onion. I had just run out of sunflower seeds so I substituted pumpkin seeds instead. I liked the comment about diluing the nama shoyu by valencia and so I used 1/4 cup nama shoyu mixed with 1/4 cup water. I used a combination of flax and olive oils for the 1/3 cup of oil. Because I felt that one extra-large onion was plenty for this recipe (I followed all of the other quantities precisely), there was only enough of the mixture to fill up about 2/3 of a dehydrator sheet. Once it warmed up a bit, it was much less sticky and much more pliable, and I was able to spread it so that it filled up the entire sheet. It's really awesome....at least 1/4 of the bread was gone before it came out of the dehydrator!!
Next: the drying time doesn't have to be 36 hours. After 12 hours at 100 degrees I was easily able to flip the sheet over and remove the teflex with no resistance or dough left on the teflex. With no teflex on either side over the next 12 hours it easily dried to a very good consistency. I don't think it would be terrible to up the temperature to 110-115 degrees if you need to get it done even more quickly than 24 hours.
Future possible variations: I might use white onion, blanched to bring out the sweetness, and make the onion slivers finer than they came out running it through the slicer in my Cuisinart processor. I might use soaked raw buckwheat as one of the main ingredients, adding tomatoes and other herbs to get a type of "focaccia" bread.
I might substitute ground nuts in lieu of 1/2 the seeds. Maybe I'll add spinach to the mix. Anyway, you get the idea....the varieties are endless. Experiment!

The Onion Bread is so addictive. When friends go on a raw food diet, this is one of the first recipes I suggest. Once you have some kind of bread, it's easy to make all sorts of different sandwiches, and sandwiches really hit the spot for me.

YUMM!!! I diluted the nama shoyu with some water to cut down on the saltiness a bit. This totally helps my starchy bread cravings. Add some caraway seeds for onion rye, or some rosemary and garlic mixed in.

My bread is finally done! The only down side is the dehydration time. Other than that it is the easiest dehydrated bread I have ever made. It is also the yummiest! Thanks for the great recipe.

Made the bread on Sunday and had avocado, sprouts & sliced red grapes on this wonderful slice of paradise! Might have to double the recipe next time just because it is disappearing so quickly!!

This is a favorite recipe of mine. At first, I was a bit hesitant. But now I've started to prefer it to regular bread! It's much more flavorful.