4.04.2011

Chained to the Kitchen

I feel like I spent the weekend cooking, doing dishes and folding laundry {all while watching General Conference, of course}. I ground some wheat and made four more loaves of bread, two batches of Orange Olive Oil cake, no-bake cookies with almond butter, and crepes.

All that effort, and two of my boys still refused to eat dinner last night or breakfast this morning. They'd live off of cereal if they could. Drives. Me. Nuts.

Wanna make some bread? I use this recipe:

Combine:
3 Tbs yeast and 1 cup lukewarm water. Set aside.

4 cups of milk {I make mine using dry milk and VERY HOT water}

Add:
1 cup honey
5 tsp salt
1/2 c oil
the yeast mixture
7 cups of flour

Mix well. Add another 7 cups of flour, one cup at a time. Let rise until doubled in size. Punch down, divide into 4 loaves, and bake at 350 for 40 minutes. Serve with butter and homemade jam.

{images from West Elm}

9 comments:

The Dragonfly said...

Do you use a mixer (Kitchen Aid or Bosch) or do it all by hand? I'm not sure my Bosch could hold all that flour! But it sounds delish.

MelancholySmile said...

I use a Bosch and it works beautifully. The recipe also makes great crescent rolls.

Hannah Q. Parris said...

Thanks so much for sharing the recipe! I make a lot of pita bread, pizza dough, and other bready items, but haven't found a loaf recipe that I love. Can't wait to try it!

Janae said...

Way to go on the cooking--I hear you on never pleasing everyone in the family. Do you use all whole wheat or half and half? Does the bread seem dense?

MelancholySmile said...

I like it best when it's half and half, but lately I've been saving the white flour for cakes and stuff, so the bread is 100% whole wheat. It's not too dense-- I use hard white wheat instead of red wheat.

Hannah Q. Parris said...

You inspired me to have a baking day. I made two loaves of your bread with half whole wheat and half bread flour - delicious! And I tried the orange olive oil cake, too, since I have orange trees in the backyard. My husband and I can't stop eating it. Then I finished up the kitchen day with homemade pasta and spinach-edamame pesto. Thanks for the food inspiration & recipes!

The Starter House said...

hey! does... oh no i forgot what you call him on your blog...uhm...does your littlest one eat this bread? there is honey in it...does that matter? i'd really like to make your recipe because sbug says you would probably have the tried and true, one and only best bread recipe ever. he recalls you lived off of bread and you were always experimenting with bread to find the best recipe...

i'm just worried about the honey...should i be? does cooking it kill possible honeybee bacteria that we are so worried about?

Ahhh botulism!

okay... just curious if you feed it to the baby...

MelancholySmile said...

Oops! I gave Baby R a piece of the bread this morning-- totally forgot about the honey.

Normally, no, I don't give him anything with honey, even if it's cooked, boiled or baked-- including Honey Nut Cheerios. Apparently, botulism spores are really hard to kill.

You could substitute sugar in the meantime, or just keep the delicious home-cooked bread to yourself until he's a year old. :)

Nicole said...

I read the ingredients once and it seems that most "honey nut" cheerios actually don't have honey or nuts, just flavoring:). Lucky for us because our baby loves them! Though the unsweetened version is probably much healthier!

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