After showing you how to make Cinnamon Swirl Bread…I got a notion to try Chocolate Swirl Bread. (I get chocolate notions all the time.)

Let me just say that I’m very glad I got that notion. Now we can all have chocolate for breakfast!!! What a great start to the day…

Chocolate Swirl Bread is just as simple to make as the Cinnamon Swirl Bread…you pretty much just substitute cocoa powder for cinnamon!

I used this bread recipe, then rolled out the dough before shaping the loaf. Then I spread butter over the dough and sprinkled on about 1/4 cup sucanat (dehydrated cane sugar juice) mixed with 2 teaspoons of cocoa powder. Roll it up and bake as directed.

Do you think it would be too much to have this Chocolate Swirl Bread with Hot Cocoa? I think I could handle washing down my chocolate with a little chocolate.

This is my favorite, simple 100% Whole Wheat Bread recipe. This recipe makes two loaves. (I always double it for my family, so if the pictures in this tutorial look like twice the amount, that’s because it is.)

Honey Whole Wheat BreadYum

6 cups (give or take) whole wheat flour, divided
1 ¾ cups warm water, divided
1/3 cup honey
1 package active dry yeast (2 1/4 teaspoon)
1 teaspoon sea salt
3 Tablespoons melted butter

Mix 3 cups of whole wheat flour with 1 ½ cups of warm water in a large glass bowl. Allow this to sit for about 30 minutes. This will break down the gluten and help the bread to rise better.

In a small bowl mix together ¼ cup water, 2 1/4 teaspoons yeast and 1/3 cup honey. Allow this to sit for about 10 minutes, or until the yeast is activated and mixture becomes bubbly.

In the meantime, melt 3 Tablespoons butter in a small sauce pan. Remove from heat and allow to cool. You don’t want the hot butter to kill the yeast.

Add 1 teaspoon salt, melted butter and yeast mixture to the flour and water mixture. Gradually add the remaining three cups of flour and stir well. As the dough becomes harder to stir, pour it out onto a clean counter and begin to knead the dough. If you create a nice dough before adding all three cups of flour…you don’t need to continue to add it in. Just add enough to make a nice, non-sticky dough.

Here’s a video to show you how to knead the dough. Two things:  1) I was having a freaked out hair day. So glad I could share it with you. 2) I’m pretty sure “wetter” is not a real word, yet I use that word toward the end of the video. I are sorry.

Don’t you love how I “spank” the dough at the end of the clip? There’s something very gratifying about giving the dough a nice “spank”. You should try it sometime.

Once you’ve kneaded your dough, place it into a bowl to rise.

Cover the dough with a cloth and let it rise for at least one hour or until it has risen to twice  it’s starting size.

While you’re waiting for your dough to rise, get your bread pans buttered. You can also do some laundry, wash some dishes, or clean the bread dough out from under your fingernails.

There it is…doubled up.

Give the raised dough a nice punch.
(Punching? Spanking? Who knew making bread was so violent in nature?)

Using a floured hand, pull the dough out of the bowl onto the counter.

Knead for three or four minutes until the air bubbles are all gone.

Now you can watch how I shape my dough into loaves before baking. Again…more spanking…

Cover and allow 30 minutes to one hour to rise again. They should double in size, but the rising should happen more quickly this time because the yeast knows what to do by now.

See here how the loaves have doubled in size?

Bake the bread uncovered in a 350 degree oven for 45-50 minutes, or until the bread sounds hollow when you thump the top of it. (Great. Spanking, punching and thumping. I am really a bad influence.)

Allow the bread to cool in the pans for 10 minutes,
then remove it to finish cooling on a wire rack.

The bread slices more easily after it’s cooled. However…it’s awfully hard to wait…and bread fresh out of the oven slathered in butter is really, really good. I say go for it.

A few notes:

• Making bread from start to finish takes about 3 1/2 to 4 hours. Most of that time is waiting and baking time…but if you plan to make bread, you should block out an entire morning or afternoon.
• If your water or butter is too cold or too hot, it will kill the yeast. If you can put your (clean) finger in the water or butter and it doesn’t burn you, but just feels warm… you’ve got the right temperature.
• If the dough in your bowl has risen to double and suddenly you need to nurse the baby or wash cottage cheese out from between your toddler’s toes…just go punch down your dough and let it rise again before you shape it. It won’t hurt anything.
• If you want to shape your dough into loaves, but bake them later:  Shape your loaves then put them directly into the freezer before they have a chance to rise. Allow them to sit in buttered loaf pans for several hours (or overnight) so that they can thaw and rise before baking.
• Many of you have asked if I have a bread machine. I don’t, so I’m sorry I am not able to answer your questions about them. I’m assuming this recipe would work in a machine, but I don’t know. Maybe some of you with bread machines can chime in on this?

Click here to read through posts describing and explaining grains, grain mills and grinding flour!

I’ve had several of you ask how I make my Cinnamon Swirl Bread! It is SO easy to make and your family will love it!

I use my Honey Whole Wheat Bread recipe for this. I usually double the recipe then make two regular loaves and two cinnamon swirl loaves. This recipe freezes well.

Instead of shaping the dough immediately into a loaf, roll it out like this.

Spread a generous amount of softened butter all over the rolled out dough.

Sprinkle with a mixture of cinnamon/sugar (I use cinnamon/sucanat). I haven’t measured this out but I would estimate the amount needed to be about 2 teaspoons of cinnamon mixed with 1/4 cup of sucanat.

Roll it up.

Poke the ends under to make a loaf shape, place in a buttered bread pan, let the loaf rise for about 30-45 minutes and bake as directed.

This bread is AWESOME lightly toasted and then buttered! With a glass of milk.

Sprinkle on some raisins if you like for Cinnamon Raisin Bread!

See how easy that is?! :)

Here’s the recipe I’ve been promising!

Whole Wheat and Honey Zucchini BreadYum

3 cups whole wheat flour
2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup honey
2 cups shredded zucchini (I use my food processor to shred zucchini, skin and all)
1/2 cup melted butter
2 eggs

In a large mixing bowl combine flour, cinnamon, baking soda, sea salt, nutmeg and baking powder. Stir in honey, zucchini, eggs and melted butter. Mix ingredients until dry ingredients are moistened. Pour into two well buttered loaf pans. Bake at 350° for 45-60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Whole Wheat and Honey Zucchini Muffins

Prepare as above, except scoop dough into 24 paper-lined muffin tins. Bake at 400° for 20 minutes.

I’ve still got a few zucchini recipes coming up, including Zucchini Brownies, Zucchini Cake and even fun Cheeseburger Zucchini Boats! 

As you can tell…I’m baking this weekend! What are you up to?

I decided to do a little baking today. Why? Because it’s always fun to bake on a 101° day, right?

I know I’m weird, but we have to eat…and cooking and baking in a hot kitchen reminds me of my grandma. And thinking of my grandma makes me happy (even in my hot kitchen). I used to help her a lot in the summers, feeding the men during the long hot days of wheat harvest, making sauerkraut, feeding family members who would come by. Seems like Grandma was always feeding people.

Her kitchen was about as big as my small bathroom. And – it was hot. But because I was with my grandma, doing all the things I loved to do, I didn’t even care. And neither did she.

Anyway, even though it was hot (and humid) today, I decided to do some baking. Inspired by my friend Megan, I came up with a Strawberry Bread recipe to share with you!

Strawberry BreadYum

2 cups fresh (or frozen) strawberries
3  cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups sucanat
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup melted butter
3 eggs

First…you can do one of two things with your strawberries:  If they’re fresh, you can slice them and stir them into your dry ingredients. Or, if you don’t think your family will like chunks of strawberries in their bread, blend them all up in the blender, then mix in. If you’re using frozen strawberries, thaw, then blend in blender.

Mix dry ingredients together. Stir in butter, eggs and strawberries. Pour into two buttered loaf pans. Bake in a 350° oven for 45-50 minutes.

The bread looks a little bit dark…probably from the whole wheat flour and sucanat. Oh, but it TASTES so good! I’m thinking that throwing a few chocolate chips in might be good too!

Since I had to have the oven on anyway, I doubled the recipe and made four loaves! I also mixed up some Corn Dog Muffins and threw those in. Gotta make the heat worth it right? Now, I’ve got a big batch of Corn Dog Muffins and two loaves of Strawberry Bread in the freezer for another day when I don’t want to turn on the oven!

Now that I’m finished baking, I’m sitting in the living room under the ceiling fan with a cold glass of Limeade. It’s fun having these “hot kitchen memories” of Grandma…but maybe now I’ll just sit in the coolness and think of a snowy Christmas with Grandma…

I used to make these bagels all the time…then I guess I forgot about them. Recently the boys asked, “WHEN are you going to make those yummy bagels again?!” (I think they ended the sentence with “oh our Beautiful Mother Dearest” or something like that.)

Funny how you can completely forget about a particular recipe for a while. I made the requested bagels again last weekend and I think I made quite a few little men (and one tall one) very happy. Wow, is that all it takes?

Making bagels takes a few different steps…but they aren’t hard steps. You mix, rest, shape, broil, boil, and bake. I kinda think it’s fun to say “broil your bagels”, but then again, I don’t get out much.

Honey Whole Wheat BagelsYum

4  to 4 1/2  cups whole wheat flour (I use freshly ground flour from hard white wheat)
1 pkg yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons)
1 1/2 cups warm water (if you put your finger in and it hurts, it’s too hot and will kill your yeast)
3 Tablespoons honey + 1 Tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon sea salt

Stir together 2 cups of the flour, the salt and the yeast. Add in the warm water and 3 Tablespoons honey. Gradually add in the remaining flour.

Dump it out and knead the flour in until the dough is smooth and elastic.
Cover the dough and let it take a nap for about 10 minutes. (zzzz)

Divide the dough into twelve equal parts.

Set a timer for 20 minutes. Begin shaping each piece of dough into a nice ball. Stick your finger in the middle of the ball and pull it apart to create about a 2 inch hole.

Lay it onto a buttered cookie sheet or baking stone.
Continue until all the bagels are formed. Let them sit until your timer goes off.

After your 20 minute timer goes off, turn the broiler on in your oven.
Broil your bagels for 2 minutes on each side.

Meanwhile…bring a big pot of water to a boil. Stir in the remaining 1 T. honey.

Put 4-6 bagels into the water, turn down the heat and
simmer for seven minutes, turning the bagels over once during that time.

Continue to boil your bagels until they are all done.
Let them drain on a towel for 1-2 minutes.

Bake at 375 ° for 25-30 minutes or until the tops are golden brown.

Slice these, toast them, then slather them with butter or cream cheese for breakfast….oh my goodness.

Now I want to experiment with cinnamon raisin or blueberry bagels…and what other flavors can you think of?

Okay, answer me this….is it fun to say “broil your bagels” or is it just me? Yeah, you know you love it.
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This post is linked to Frugal Fridays.