The Baker's Healthy Market Basket

Almonds improve the healthy scorecard of any bread or pastry, but when you add other nutritious ingredients, the impact is cumulative. Fortunately, almonds play well with others. So you can really make a statement by pairing almonds with other nutrient-rich foods such as dried fruits, whole grains, seeds, plant oils and honey.

Dried fruits

• Fold dried apricots, dried cherries and chopped almonds into a quick bread.
• Make an energy bar with dried plums, sesame seeds, almonds, oats and honey.
• Add currants, chopped almonds and fennel seed to a dinner roll.
• Serve a dried-fruit compote with almond macaroons.

Dark chocolate

• Stir almond butter into dark chocolate pudding. Serve as a mini-indulgence in espresso cups.
• Make snack clusters with mixed dried fruits and natural almonds bound with bittersweet chocolate.
• Bake almond-granola cookies with dark chocolate chunks
• Make poached pears with almond-milk custard and dark chocolate curls

Whole grains

• Bake whole wheat-raisin muffins and serve with honey-sweetened almond butter
• Frost a whole wheat-carrot cake with almond butter-flavored buttercream
• Add almond flour to English-style oat biscuits; serve with fresh cheese
• Make a fresh fruit crisp with an oat and almond crumb topping

From baking traditions throughout Western Europe, we know that almonds complement most pastry ingredients, says Aaron C. Brown CHE, baking and pastry instructor at the Culinary Institute of America. "The almond is basically a seed, like sunflower seeds and flax," says Brown, "and I think it pairs well with those things."

Thanks to the almond's mild, buttery nature, it can serve as a bridge between incompatible flavors, says the chef. Take chocolate and orange—two ingredients that many people enjoy on their own but not not together. "I personally love them together," says Brown, "but many people think that the bitterness of chocolate and the sourness of orange conflict. However, chocolate and almond go together, and almond and orange pair very well."

Almond can be the linking ingredient, says the chef, helping to mellow the bitter and sour notes in a chocolate-orange dessert. Cannoli filling—a fluff of ricotta, chopped chocolate, candied orange and slivered almonds—proves the point emphatically.

How many heart-healthy ingredients can you knead into a loaf of broad? Find out in this video demo of Almond, Mission Fig and Golden Raisin Bread, a baguette that's practically a balanced diet all by itself.