Whole- wheat bread recipe

Are'nt they beautiful!  And they smell like heaven!  Here is good healthy wheat bread recipe you can try.

I got this recipe from Dana Thornocks recipe book. If anyone who does not know who she is, she wrote the book "Lean and free 2000 plus" An excellent book for anyone who wants to be fit and healthy the right way.  Sadly she passed away a few years ago, but left behind a wealth of information on healthy eating. I did tweak this recipe a little bit to add extra fiber. I posted the recipe how it originally was and just added notes of my changes on the side.

Nutrition:

1 slice of this bread has 88 calories, and has 1 fat gram, I don't know the fiber content, but it should be at least 3 grams ( And it should be more if you add the flax meal and oat bran meal)

Ingrediants:

10-12 cups whole wheat flour ( I replaced 2 1/2 cups of the flour with 1/2 cup flax meal and 2 cups oat bran meal)

2 tablespoons dry rapid rise yeast ( I used the SAF brand)

1/2 cup wheat gluten

4 cups warm water (120-130 degrees)

1/3 cup oil (I used canola oil)

1/3 cup honey ( A good tip I learned a few years ago is measure your honey in the same measuring cup you used for the oil. That way the honey slips right out of the cup and does not stick because there is still an oil residue)

1 tablespoon salt

Place 6 cups flour into mixer bowl with kneading arm. Add dry yeast and gluten; mix well. Add water and mix for 1 minute. Cover and let dough sit for 10 minutes. This makes the bread lighter. Add oil, honey, and salt. Turn on mixer and quickly add remaining flour one cup at a time until dough forms a ball and cleans the sides of the bowl . ( I added 2 cups oat bran and 1/2 cup flax meal in place of 2 1/2 cups flour.) knead 7- 10 minutes in mixer and 12 to 15 minutes if you are doing by hand. Dough should be smooth and elastic.

Preheat oven 150 degrees. Lightly oil hands. Divide dough into 3 or four equal portions. Shape and place in oiled or cooking sprayed bread pans. Place into warm oven for 15 - 20 minutes at let rise until about double in size. Then turn oven to 350 degrees and bake about 20- 25 minutes until golden brown. Turn out pans onto a cooling rack immediately. (I brushed the tops lightly with butter) When the loaves cool put bread in plastic bags. store in the freezer if you are not going to eat with in two days. ( my homemade bread is usually gone in two days so it does not usually make it to the freezer :-)

Look what I have been up to!

I have been trying to find ways to save money and become more self sufficient and here are couple of  new things that I am trying.

I started my own plant starts for my kiddie pool gardens a week ago and this is what I woke up to this morning!

There is just something magical about seeing new seedlings popping up out of the soil!  It makes me happy :-)

This seedling is a sunflower plant.  If you look close you can see the sunflower seed shell hanging on the plant.  I am going to plant about 8 sunflowers along my fence  The rest of my seedling are veggies for the gardens.

And call me crazy, but I have decided to try my hand at having some laying hens!  I have never done this before, but my friend Shauna has always had laying hens and says that fresh layed eggs taste way better than store bought.  She said that even though they say the store bought eggs are fresh  they are actually usually about a month old by the time they get to the store and the birds that lay these eggs are pumped full of hormones and antibiotics.  I have actually been interested in getting my own chickens for a couple of years now, but listening to her pushed me over the edge and convinced me to try it. So I  got 4 chicks at my local Cal- Ranch store that are about 2 weeks old. They are supposed to all be hens. I sure hope none of them are roosters!

 I will have to keep you posted on how it all works out!

Cinnabon Frosting

Yum, Michelle! Are you trying to kill my diet or what???!!! I might just have to make some of these while Josh, Noah, Seth and their 4 friends are here this weekend. I haven't made cinnamon rolls in a very long time! When I do make them, though, I always make them with the Cinnabon frosting recipe that I got from my friend a few years back. It really does taste like the real thing, so I thought I would share with the rest of you to go along with Michelle's Yummy Cinnamon Rolls listed in the previous post. So, here goes:

Cinnabon Frosting -

Whip together:

1 lb. powdered sugar
1 cream cheese, softened (8 oz.)
2 sticks butter, softened
2 1/4 tsp. vanilla
3/4 tsp. lemon juice

Spread on warm, but not too hot, cinnamon rolls.

Enjoy!!

A home library!

I loved this post today from Better After I have always dreamed of having a room in my home dedicated  just to books, a huge comfortable couch and a calm relaxing atmosphere!
 I am a lover of good books (thanks to my mom) and I have lot of books I have collected over the years stashed all over my house.  I would love, love, love a room like this!  But I fear it is only in my dreams! 
This picture is a really cute idea of how to turn a nook into a small library.

YUMMY CINNAMON ROLLS!

We had a fun Relief Society meeting last night learning how to make Cinnamon Rolls Shauna Colvin style! (An amazing lady in my ward who knows everything about everything!)
They were soooo good! so I wanted to share the recipe with everyone I know :-)   Valerie Anderson who is the R.S.meeting leader in my Ward took amazing notes and e-mailed them to everyone in our R.S. so I am just copying and pasteing her hard work (hope that is okay Val)!  Here is my poor quality camera phone pic of the fabulous Shauna and her daughter getting ready to teach the class.

I am excited to make some of these cinnamon rolls today!  I will take a pic of the end result and post it later.
For those of you who are wondering if I am still on my diet I am, but I can now eat carbs in moderation and so I will allow myself to eat one of these today after I have a perfect day of eating :-)

It is now 2 hours later and here is the result!

I added some wheat flour to this batch so it was a little heavier then Shaunas batch was last night, but they are still soft and good :-)

Shauna Colvin’s Cinnamon Rolls!


BOSCH or Kitchen Aid Recipe (Heat oven to 400°)

2 cup warm water (about 100°)

3 large eggs

2/3 cup shortening (Crisco is the preferred brand)

2/3 cup sugar

2 tsp. salt

6-7 cups unbleached flour (Sometimes Shauna uses a small amount of wheat flour in place of some of the white flour.)

3 Tbsp. instant yeast (SAF brand)

(If using a hand mixer, mix all wet ingredients together in one bowl, all dry ingredients together in another, then combine them. Knead by hand.)

Add the above ingredients to your mixer in the order listed above using 6 of the 7 cups flour initially. Mix, adding up to 1 cup more flour a little at a time IF NEEDED to reach correct consistency. Once correct consistency is reached, allow mixer to knead dough for 5-7 minutes. Roll out onto floured surface to about ½ inch thickness. (NO NEED TO RISE PUNCH DOWN, ETC.!) Shauna rolled her dough into a circle, not a rectangle which worked great and was A LOT EASIER!!! Spread with softened butter over entire surface. Cover with 1 cup brown sugar (Shauna used just under a cup, so she put it on thicker than I would have thought). Then sprinkle with Cinnamon! (Surprise ingredient, right???) (I didn’t catch any measurements for the cinnamon, but you could SEE where she had and hadn’t been over the brown sugar!) Roll the dough into a big long roll. Cut into about 1 1/2 inch sections. Arrange cinnamon rolls onto a greased jelly roll pan or cake pan so that they are touching each other, but NOT squished! (If there wasn’t room for another roll without squishing, Shauna started the next row!) Let rise on the counter for 15 minutes. Bake for about 25 minutes (ovens vary so check it at 20 and gauge accordingly!) or until nicely browned on top. Take out of oven and dump entire pan upside down onto a cooling rack. Let cool for 10-15 minutes. Flip them back upright onto a tray or clean pan to frost.

Frosting

2 cups powdered sugar

1/4 cup softened (but not melted!) butter

1 tsp. vanilla

Enough milk to reach desired consistency, Add just a little at a time!

For cream cheese frosting add 1/2 pkg. cream cheese before adding the milk.

(I added SALT to the cream cheese frosting cuz Charlie says that’s the secret to good frosting!)



ENJOY!!!!



Odds and Ends We Learned

You want your hot water to be hot enough to activate the yeast, but NOT kill it.

One pkg. yeast = 1 TBSP yeast

When a recipe calls for an egg, it usually means a LARGE egg unless specified. 1 large egg= 1/4 cup of egg.

We had a lengthy discussion about raising chickens, too! Shauna raises Rhode Island Reds as layers.

Yeast should be kept refrigerated once opened and stores well long term in the freezer. Unopened pkgs. of SAF can be kept on the shelf, but would be even better off in the freezer. Macey’s currently has SAF yeast on sale for $2.99.

Flax seed wheat bread

      I was helping my Dad clean his house last week and I came across a newspaper clipping he had saved that had blue ribbon 2009 Utah Fair winners recipes.  He had saved it for a Spice cake recipe full of walnuts Yuck!  (Sorry I don't have an issue with spice cake I'm sure it is very good.  I just have a texture issue when there are hard things in soft things) Generally I don't like nuts in cookies and cakes except for some reason I can handle nuts on top like German Chocolate cake etc. Kind of weird I know, but anyway back to what caught my eye.
Because I have been trying to eat more healthy I have been looking for a good high fiber bread recipe.  I saw this Flax seed wheat bread reicipe from Sharlet E. Braman of West Jordon Ut.  I figured it must be good if it won a prize at the State Fair so I tried it :-)  And it did not disappoint!  The recipe makes about 5 loaves.  I made a batch on Friday  and my family has almost finished it off as you can see from this picture I took  this morning.  I guess I better make more!

I only made one change.  I put in honey instead of molasses.  Next time I may try to add some oatmeal too.  Try it!  You'll like it!  And It is way healthier than store bought!


FLAX SEED WHEAT BREAD
• 3 3/4 cup hot water

• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar

• 1/4 cup molasses

• 3/4 cup butter

• 1 1/2 tablespoons salt

• 3 packages Fleischmann's RapidRise yeast

• 2 beaten eggs


• 2 tablespoons wheat gluten

• 2 tablespoons dough enhancer

• 1 cup ground flax seed

• 5 cups whole wheat flour

• 5-6 1/2 cups white flour

Heat water to almost boiling and pour into large bowl. Add sugar, molasses, salt and butter; stir to dissolve and melt. Add 3 cups wheat flour, eggs, dough enhancer, gluten, yeast and flax seed.



Beat well with mixer. Add the rest of the wheat flour while mixing dough with mixer. Add enough white flour until you have a soft dough.



Pour out dough onto a counter and knead in enough flour to make the dough smooth and elastic for 5-10 minutes. Place in a clean, greased bowl, cover and let rise until double in bulk (about 45 minutes). Punch down, shape into loaves and put into a greased bread pan. Cover and let rise for 30 minutes. While bread dough is rising, pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.



Bake bread for 35 minutes. Remove from pans and rub tops of the loaves with butter. Cool on a rack and place in plastic bags.

Preparing for gardening this Spring!

I have been thinking about the upcoming gardening season and what I want to grow this year.  I planted 3 kiddie pool gardens last year and I was very pleased with my results!  I want to do that again this year and add a forth kiddie pool garden to plant  herbs.   While blogging this morning I saw this post from V and Co. She has started plant starts for her garden already.  I have decided that I want to do that too!  I have seeds I can use from past gardening attempts.  Last year I bought starts from Wal- Mart but I think it would be more rewarding to start my own this time around.

As for flowers I found a neat blog called Meadow brook farm. She has some great advice on how to mix your annuals with your perennials and lots of other great tips.  A warning though!  The pictures on her blog will give you a giant case of spring fever!  I don't where the rest of you live, but here in Utah the weather still thinks it is Winter in April! :-(

More Canvas wall art

So I would still like to make my own Canvas wall art however it seems I have not had much time for crafting lately.  You can tell  by the last few posts on my blog ( none of them have been to do  much with crafts).  I have a few fun ideas patiently waiting downstairs in the black hole that is supposed to be my craft room.   My craft room needs to be spring cleaned and organized.  I have a feeling when that happens the crafting will magically start up again :-)
So anyway back to the canvas art.  I saw this today from sheepblue 

 I love how she has made a picture with several cavases!  I want to make something similar for above my bed.  I have three 12 x12 canvases that bought at "Big Lots" ( one of my favorite shopping haunts) a while back.  I can't wait to get my hands on them and try my hand at this!  So hopfully I will get that craft room cleared up in the next couple of days.

April Bug a boo book pick!

If you are the type of adult that just loved the Harry Potter series and have not been able to find a replacement after reading book 7 then you  need to try the Fable Haven series written by Brandon Mull!  He just came out with the 5th book in the series "Keys to the Demon Prison" at the end of March.  So that is my April book pick, but if you have not read the series yet I suggest you start with the First Fable Haven book. Brandon Mull is such a creative and imaginative writer!  His writing style is completely different then J.K. Rowling, but similar in the way he shocks and surprises you on your reading journey with outcomes that you are not always mentally prepared to accept.  ( You Harry Potter readers know what I am talking about ). 
In our family we have an order of who gets to read the new Fable Haven book first.  I first got Fable Haven for my daughter Amandas Birthday 2 or 3  years ago.  She read it so fast and furious that I knew it had to be a good book so I read it next then my Husband Mike called to read it next much to my oldest Daughter Natalies dismay. So she had the misfortune of having to wait and read it last. (Joseph my 9 year old has not been mentally mature enough to read them until now, but he is in the middle of the Percy Jackson series right now).   So that has been our Fable Haven reading order ever since.  Amanda finally finished reading " Keys to the Demon Prison "  last night so I am anxious to get started! :-)