Munchie Monday: Bread and Honey

 Last week we received a package from Son #1.  One of the things in it was a jar of Blackberry Honey!  That sounded so tasty.  We were expecting the sister missionaries for a visit on Saturday so I decided to make some bread  that morning and test out the honey when they were here.

The recipe I got many years ago was called Setpoint Bread from a book called Set For Life.  I have changed the recipe a little for our use.

Setpoint Bread

10-12 cups white whole wheat flour (I grind the flour in our VitaMix just prior to using it.)
2 Tablespoons dry yeast
1/3 cup vital wheat gluten
4 cups warm water
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup honey
1 Tablespoon salt

Place 4 cups flour, the warm water, and the yeast in the bowl of a stand mixer.  Process for 2-3 minutes then let it sit, covered, for up to 30 minutes to proof. Ten minutes will do. Add the honey, oil, and salt to the mixture and stir for about 30 seconds.  Start adding flour one cup at a time until the dough forms a ball and cleans the side of the bowl.  Add no more flour at that point but let the mixer knead the bread for 7-10 minutes.  Cover again and let rise until doubled, which takes about an hour.  Divide into four loaves and put in greased pans (unless you have silicon bread tins which do not need greasing), cover, and let rise until well above the tops of the pans...30 minutes or more.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. then bake for 30-35 minutes.  Let stand until cool (if you can!!) then slice.

This bread was pretty good!

Food Friday: Vegan Banana Bread

We have had bananas get away from us lately.  Several times.  The only thing to do is make banana bread.  I had gotten the Forks Over Knives Cookbook from the library and found this recipe:

-2 cups of whole wheat flour or whole wheat pastry flour -3/4 teaspoon of baking soda -2 or 3 ripe to overripe bananas -1/2 cup of maple syrup -1/3 cup of applesauce -1/4 cup of plant milk -1.5 teaspoons of pure vanilla extract -1/2 cup of pecans -1 tablespoon of ground flaxseed (optional) -2 tablespoons of water (only add water if you also added flaxseed)

Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. In another bowl mix everything else together then add to the dry bowl and stir well. Pour into a sprayed bread tin and cook 50-60 minutes or more in a 350 degree F. oven.

Later I found the same recipe here on YouTube for people who like to watch recipes before cooking them.

It was amazingly good for being 100 percent whole wheat flour. It was even Hard Red Winter Wheat that I ground in the VitaMix. I am looking forward to getting some Hard White Wheat soon from the Home Storage Center. That would be superior bread! At least, all the bread I ever made with white wheat was really wonderful. Not that I want to get into the habit of bread-making again, but...it is always nice if what we make is actually enjoyable to eat.

Munchie Monday: Quinoa Whole Wheat Bread

Let's start out by saying that it is absolutely impossible to walk away from a fresh-out-of-the-oven slice of whole wheat bread.  Or any bread, for that matter.  This is why I do not make bread very often.  I eat one or two or three slices of it while warm.  With butter on it.  Often also with homemade jam on it.  This is not good for the waist line nor for the blood sugar.  So why would I make it, you ask.  Sometimes just because my Dear One loves it.

Last week we were having the missionaries eat supper with us.  I wanted to make the bread and have it be cooking when they walked in the door.  Why? Number 1 because there is nothing like the smell of fresh bread baking and, Number 2, I thought they would love to have some hot bread just in case the rest of the food was sub-par.

Well, instead of doing that, I made the bread the day before.  I ground the wheat in the VitaMix which worked beautifully.  I am blessed to have a Bosch mixer so I put the ingredients in that and went to town on the directions.

Our daughter shared the recipe that she had found on Mels Kitchen Cafe. I have mentioned that site before.


1 cup uncooked quinoa
2 1/4 cups water
8 cups or 40 ounces whole wheat flour
1/3 cup vital wheat gluten
1 1/2 Tablespoons instant yeast
4 teaspoons salt
2 1/4 cups milk, warmed to about 110 degrees F.
3/4 cup water, also warmed about that much
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup cooking oil of your choice but not olive oil

The first thing I did was grind about 12 cups of red winter wheat in the VitaMix, 3 cups at a time, and placed it in a large plastic container.

Next I cooked the quinoa in the Instant Pot for 1 minute on HIGH then let it reduce pressure naturally for quite a while. I tend to forget about things in the Instant Pot.  After pulling the quinoa out of the IP, I let it begin cooling while I put the dry ingredients into the Bosch bowl with the dough hook installed.

Put 40 ounces of whole wheat flour in the mixer bowl along with the vital wheat gluten, salt, and yeast.  Give it a few pulses to combine well.

In a large measuring cup combine the milk, water, honey, and oil and stir well.  Pour into the mixer bowl on top of the dry ingredients and begin mixing on low.  When more or less mixed, stop the mixer and let it sit for 15-30 minutes.  By that time the quinoa will be cool enough to add in.

To add the quinoa, turn on the mixer again and spoon in the quinoa one spoonful at a time, ESPECIALLY if it is still pretty warm. You do not want to kill the little yeastlets that are growing in your dough.  If the dough is sticking to the sides of the bowl you need to add more flour, 1/4 cup at a time.  It is ready for the real kneading when the dough cleans the side of the bowl.

When they are all added in, let dough knead for 5, 6, 7, or more minutes then take out the dough hook, push the dough down into the bowl so it is more or less even across the top, then put the covers back on.  Let it rest until double in bulk.  This will be when the dough rises up and touches the inside of the covers (in a Bosch mixer...you need to figure it out with your own mixer when double is).

Take out of bowl and put on a slightly floured board and cut into three pieces.  Shape into bread-like tubes then put into greased bread tins or un-greased silicon bread pans. (The only glitch with the silicon pans is that the loaf will look a little bit pregnant when it is cooked...). Let the dough rise for about 30 minutes. 

At this point I turned the oven on to 350 degrees F.  After about 20 minutes the oven was hot and the dough had risen an inch or more above the bread tins so I popped it into the oven to cook for 30-35 minutes.  The 8 1/2 by 4 1/2 inch tins were ready after 30 minutes.  The silicon pan needed another 5 minutes.

It was good bread.

Yes.  I ate three fat slices.  Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.  But so good.

This was hard red winter wheat.  The bread would have been lighter in texture if I had used hard white winter wheat but I did not have any conveniently to hand.  I will get some soon. If I plan to make more bread.  I still imagine taking some fresh bread to our new neighbors to say hello...

And, sad to say, the loaf of bread I had set aside for the missionaries was still sitting aside when they left...so I will be making bread again for them.

Munchie Monday: Whole Wheat Waffles with Blueberries

 Dear One loves waffles.  If I ever ask him what he wants for breakfast, he will say either waffles or fried potatoes. Or both.  Some days I am perfectly happy to comply...but only on weekends. 

There are a few problems with waffles in my mind:  with our previous waffle maker I frequently got burned.  That put me off big time. I hate burns.  They have bad memories for me.  Plus I don't like added pain.  A second issue is that waffles use a lot of flour.  Flour seems to me to be addictive.  Once I eat one thing with flour in it, the floodgates open and I pour flour-y things down my throat.  A very bad idea.  Another thing about waffles is that the recipes always make a lot of batter...so I can either make a ton of waffles, put the waffle batter in the refrigerator to vegetate until I dispose of it, or throw out the batter right away. I don't like any of these options.  Because of that, I tried something new...I made up my own recipe.

Whole Wheat Waffle Batter

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon coarse salt
3/4 cup milk
3 Tablespoons vegetable oil
1 egg
1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup fresh blueberries

After putting the dry ingredients in a small bowl, I stirred them until smooth then added all the wet ingredients and stirred very carefully with a whisk.  This care was necessary since I had used a small bowl.  Next time, if there is a next time, I will use a larger bowl so I can be less careful with stirring.

In this case I left the batter to sit on the counter for 5 minutes or so because I wanted the flour to begin absorbing the wet ingredients. I planned to wait 10 minutes but became antsy for the waffles to be done.

NOTE:  before starting the recipe I hauled out the deep waffle maker and started it heating up.

After spraying the waffle maker, which by this time, was nice and hot and ready for batter,  I took a 1/4 cup portion scoop and scooped the thick batter into each of the four waffle wells  There was batter left over which I had expected. I sprinkled a few blueberries on each of the waffles then scooped up more batter and covered them up...thinking this would avoid a nasty blueberry mess on the waffle iron.  I let them cook for 4 minutes by the clock.

When I opened the waffle iron, there were four nice crisp waffles.  Dear One ate three and I ate one.  After all, with butter and pure maple syrup it is hard to pass them up.

This recipe worked okay.  They were pretty sturdy waffles and tasted about medium. PLUS there was no leftover batter at all!  A real bonus.

You can see there was not too much blueberry mess. I am not sure they added to the waffles but they were about at the end of their rope so, why not use them up?!