100% Whole Wheat Bread

Do you make your own bread? Do you want to? Well, as I think I have shared before we grind our own grain, and I like to make our own bread. However when I make my own bread I like to use all whole wheat, that I have ground. MOST of the recipes I have found are not what we want....they include a different kind of flour, or they are way to thick and crumbly. It has been driving me crazy!

But now....I have found a recipe that we really like and is really simple! Want to see it?

100% Whole Wheat Bread

ingredients

1 3/4 C warm water (110 degrees F)
1/4 C honey
2 tsp. instant yeast
6 C Stone ground whole wheat flour
6 T Vital wheat gluten
1 T Flax seed
1 T Flax seed mill
1 T rolled oats
1 T sesame seed
1 T quinoa (I use some type of substitute)
1 T Sunflower seeds
1 t salt
2 T coconut oil, melted

Directions-

Pour warm water and honey into a large bowl, and stir to dissolve honey. Sprinkle the yeast over the top of the liquid and let stand until the yeast bubbles and forms a creamy layer.

In a bowl, stir together the whole wheat flour, gluten, flax seed, flax seed mill, rolled oats, sesame seed, quiona, sunflower seeds and salt until the seeds are dispersed evenly. Pour the flour mixture into the yeast mixture, add the coconut oil and mix everything together. Scoop the dough out onto a well floured surface, and knead until smooth and springy (which I would just say need for about 15 min). Allow dough to rest for 15 minutes and then knead for another 10 minutes.

Form the dough into a ball and place in an oiled bowl, and turn the ball over several times to coat with oil. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, 30-45 min.

Grease two 9x5 loaf pans. Punch down the dough, and cut into 2 pieces. Form each piece into a loaf and place into the loaf pans., seam side down, and cover the pans with plastic wrap. Let rise until doubled, about 30 min.

Preheat oven to 350. Bake the loaves in the preheated oven until they are golden brown and sound hollow when tapped. 30-35 mins. I brush mine with coconut oil after they come out of the oven....mmmm...

I love that my children are growing up with the smells of freshly baked bread. THAT makes me smile!

Okay now I am off to bake! I am planning to make at least a double batch of this today. Four loaves should do it.....hmm....maybe I will make six.....

Peaches and Cream

We LOVE pancakes in our house. And just so you know.....they are not always a breakfast food around here. We had them for dinner last night. Honestly, we have them for dinner about once a week! Yesterday at Whole Foods they had peaches on sale for .99 per pound! We stocked up ;)

So last night with our dinner we had peaches and cream on top. They were SO good! I made pancakes as I normally do, and I did this-

chopped up about 2 cups fresh peaches and mixed with 1/4 cup sucanat. I heated them for a while (while I was cooking the pancakes)

I poured some whipping cream in the Kitchen Aid mixer while the peaches were cooking and the pancakes were going, added a little bit of vanilla and let it whip us up some yummy cream.

Before I knew it we had pancakes with peaches and cream! WOW. That was EASY!

Do you "spice up" pancakes at your house? If so, what do you use?

Strawberry bread

This time of year one of our FAVORITE things is strawberries! We recently got 10lbs really cheap and ended up eating all of them, with the exception of the few I spared to make some yummy strawberry bread!

Strawberry bread-

3 c flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
2 c sugar (we use sucanat)
1 1/2 c oil (veggie or coconut)
1 c nuts, finely chopped (we use pecan)
4 eggs well beaten
2 c strawberries mashed with their juice (can use frozen)

Combine dry ingredients. Add eggs, oil, strawberries, and nuts. Stirr until all ingredients are moistened. Pour into 2 greased loaf pans. Bake at 325 for one hour.

This recipe along with several others can be found in the cookbook Recipes for Redemption. Our friends the Roberts produced this cookbook as a way to raise funds for the adoption of their precious baby boy, Ezra! I still have some of these books for sale if anyone is interested, just let me know! :)

PLEASE keep praying for Ezra and the Roberts family as they wait to be with their son! It shouldn't be long now :D

Peanut Butter Granola

Our family LOVES this recipe! We eat it like cereal and sometime we mix it in with some vanilla yogurt....YUM! SO EASY and SO good!!

6T oil (we use coconut)
1 cup peanut butter
1 1/2 c brown sugar
7 cups oats
raisins (optional)

Melt the oil and peanut butter together. Remove from heat and add the sugar. Pour over oats and mix well. Spread into a LARGE cookie sheet, I usually use a couple and bake at 350 for about 18-20 mins. Add raisins, if desired, in the last 5 mins of baking.

We like this SO much I have been known to double and even triple the recipe!

Black Bean Tostados

This is one of our favorites! Again it is taken from the recipe in the Nourishing Traditions cookbook....

Black beans (3-4 cups) cooked
Tortillas
tomatoes
avocado
brown rice
cheese

For this recipe, very VERY simple! When I am making tortillas, we just don't cook them, we fry them in olive oil! Then we top them with brown rice, black beans, tomatoes, avocado, cheese, and serve with sour cream and salsa!!

YUMMY!

Black Bean Burritos

Here is my Black Bean Burrito recipe, adapted from the Nourishing Traditions cookbook-

I use-
3 cups black beans (that I cook)
3 cups brown rice
1/2 onion finely chopped
green chiles (I usually use one small can)
ground cumin (I just guess about how much of this I use)

I just mix all of this up together, then throw it into some homemade tortillas...Bake it until it is warm all the way through. I serve it with sour cream and salsa! It usually last at least two meals in our house! The night we made these we ended up with a few extra kids for dinner and I wasn't sure about serving them to six kids! (One had a wheat allergy, so it really wasn't an option!) Since I already had them made, we just stuck them in the freezer!

Enjoy!