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Category Archives: Bread

Virginia Street Banana Nut Bread

Posted on November 7, 2012 by Veronica

George Geary (author of 125 best Cheesecake Recipes) presenting Marina with a second place ribbon for her Chocolate Truffle Brownie Cups for Ghirardelli Chocolates 2009

I announced Monday that two signed copies of Splendour in my Kitchen by Marina Castle are up for auction until Thursday night, to help raise a little extra money for Suzie’s gallbladder surgery.  (Click here for more details about half way down-there’s only one bidder so far, so you might get yourself a bargain while helping a good cause.)  This blue-ribbon banana bread (Marina has won many blue ribbons for it, actually) is just one of the many fabulous recipes found within the cookbook.   Though I’ve had the cookbook for a couple years, I just started making this recipe back in August and have been making it several times a month ever since, and lately in triple batches.  This is what I think of as a classic banana bread, but with a few twists that make it extra-special and a real treat.

Photo by Marina Castle

The best thing about this bread is its texture.  I have never had a better texture in a recipe for banana bread-it is so soft and smooth, it’s almost silky.  It is not too heavy or dense as some banana breads can be, but not fluffy as a cake either.  As Goldilocks would say, it’s juuuuust right.  It has a great banana flavor, scented with cinnamon, and the combination of nuts, sugar & butter on top give it dessert-quality decadence.

This recipe is also apparently indestructible.  I’ve been tripling the recipe and baking it up up in mini aluminum pans to sell in my sister’s shop and at the bake sale at work, and I’ve once miscalculated the amounts, and another time completely left the eggs out, and both times it was still good. Not silky smooth, but really good despite the errors.  Hey, I can get down with a forgiving recipe because I’ve had a lot of spazzy kitchen moments lately. LOL!  Anyway, if you’d like to bake up a ton of mini pans for holiday gifts, I’ve included a link for a large batch recipe so you (hopefully) won’t make my mistakes.

Enjoy!

Virginia Street Banana Nut Bread

Printable recipe
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Large batch recipe–makes 3 loaves or 10 mini loaves

1 ½ cups (13 oz peeled) mashed ripe bananas
1 tablespoon melted butter, divided
½ cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups (8 1/2 oz) all-purpose flour
1 cup (8 oz) granulated sugar plus 1-2 teaspoons, divided
1 ½ teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped toasted pecans or walnuts, divided

Preheat oven to 325F and grease a large 9×5 loaf pan; set aside.

Mix bananas, 1 teaspoon of the melted butter, oil, eggs, and vanilla in medium bowl until well mixed. Blend flour, 1 cup sugar, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt and add to banana mixture. Stir until mostly mixed, then add nuts, reserving some for the top,  and pour mixture into a large 9” x 5″ greased loaf pan. Sprinkle remaining nuts & sugar over top of loaf, then drizzle remaining melted butter over. Bake for 60 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Cool loaf in pan for 10 minutes. Remove and finish cooling on wire rack until completely cooled.  Wrap well with plastic wrap.  Loaf is the better next day.

Makes 1 loaf.

Recipe source: rewritten from Splendour in my Kitchen by Marina Castle

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Chocolate-Filled Orange Buns

Posted on October 1, 2012 by Veronica

As you know, I’m a member of the Secret Recipe Club.  On September 14, one of our members, Daniel of The Haggis and The Herring, passed away suddenly and expectantly.  He had just made dinner for his family and bam.  He was gone.  I don’t know the details, but what a shock.  His wife was expecting their third child, and just thirty minute before he died he was telling his wife how much he loved her and how everything was going to be OK.  There are so many stories like this that make us realize how fleeting and precious life is, that you never know what to expect, and yet we are never fully prepared when caught by surprise.  Not even half-prepared.  It can turn your world upside down.  My heart breaks for his family.

Despite being in this club with Daniel, I was never in the same group and him and I don’t believe I ever visited his blog until he was gone.  I debated whether I should join the special tribute reveal with other members of the club, to remember him by posting a recipe from his blog.  I felt strange about it since we never once communicated while he was alive that I know of, but being in the same club, both being food bloggers, and now having read some of his blog, including the beautiful eulogy his wife shared when she announced his passing, I felt his life deserved to be commemorated this way, and I couldn’t not join the tribute.

I chose this recipe because these buns were very special to Daniel.  His grandmother made them while he was growing up and were his favorite sweet, but for a long time, he couldn’t’ find her recipe to duplicate them after she had passed away.  His aunt finally found a copy his grandmother had written in Spanish and she translated it for Daniel to make and share on his blog.  He was so happy to be able to finally enjoy them again.

I didn’t have orange blossom water, so I upped the amount of orange zest in the recipe to make sure the orange flavor still came through and I thought the orange and chocolate flavors were very nice.  I didn’t make these small like they should have been, so the amount of chocolate to bread was off, but they were still tasty. I loved how light the bread was, even when at room temperature. I took these pictures with room temperature buns so you can imagine how melty the chocolate and how light the bread is when warm. These aren’t very sweet, so I thought they were very nice as a breakfast treat with coffee. I brought them to work and they were gone in an hour-I couldn’t believe it. Either that means they are good, or people at work are starved for homemade goodies! I need to feed them more often, I think. :)

I hope that Daniel would be honored by this tribute to his life, and that his favorite buns have found their way into the hearts of others through his willingness to share his family heirloom recipe.

Chocolate-Filled Orange Buns

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4 eggs
½ cup oil
¾ cup sugar
½ cup milk
½ cup orange juice
2 tablespoons orange zest (from about two oranges)
1 packet (2 ¼ teaspoons) instant yeast (aka bread machine yeast)
6-7 cups all-purpose flour
1 (12 oz) bag semisweet chocolate
1 egg for egg wash
Confectioners sugar for dusting (optional)

In a large mixing bowl, combine eggs, oil, sugar, milk, orange juice, orange blossom water and rind. Whisk together. Mix the yeast with 4 cups of the flour and stir into the liquid mixture with a large spoon.  Continue stirring in flour until it is too stiff to stir, then turn it out onto a floured surface and begin kneading more flour in until the dough becomes smooth and elastic.  Roll into a ball and place in a greased bowl, turning once to coat in oil.  Cover bowl with a cloth and allow to rest in a warm draft-free place until doubled in size, about one hour.

To make the rolls, press a small handful of dough into a 3 x 3 square. place some chocolate at one end and roll it up. Place rolls on a non-stick baking sheet. (I put mine into two greased 9×13 baking dishes.) Cover rolls with plastic and let rise for 30 minutes or until doubled in size.

Preheat oven to 350F. Beat egg for wash and brush onto buns with pastry brush. Bake for 20 minutes or until buns are slightly golden-brown on top. Sprinkle buns with confectioners sugar when done. Buns can be frozen for later use.

Makes 24 large rolls, or 48 small.



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Favorite Cornbread

Posted on September 26, 2012 by Veronica

With three different cornbread recipes on my blog already, you might think I was cornbread crazed since I’m adding another.  Well, I guess maybe I am.  Growing up, we practically lived off of beans and cornbread during the winter months.  Plain pinto beans with no spices save salt, and whole wheat cornbread that was dry, not sweet at all, and was perfect for absorbing copious amounts of salty butter.  It might not sound particularly tasty, but we loved it.  I think it was the magic of butter, which we surprisingly were allowed to consume without limits since Grandpa deemed it a healthy fat and Mom learned all her health-nut ways from  him.  So we loved our beans and butter, er, cornbread.

This cornbread is the antithesis of the cornbread I was raised on, and truth be told, the first time I made it I was completely aghast that Mel dared to call it cornbread.  This wasn’t cornbread, this was cake.  And her whipped honey butter? The frosting!

But everyone (I brought it for a chili day at work) loooved it.  I didn’t bring the honey butter the first year and at first, some were disappointed, but after tasting it said, “This doesn’t even need butter!”  It really doesn’t.  It practically melts in your mouth, it is so soft and moist.  I noticed when I brought the honey butter last year they barely touched it.  The cornbread is perfect on its own but if you really think you need some sweet butter, go to Mel’s blog for her unique recipe, which includes marshmallow fluff and is very good.

Anyway, after making this for others for two years and taking little tastes, I finally made it just for us for the first time last week when the temps were cooler and I wanted something to go with some ham & bean soup.  I have to say, I’m a convert.  Sorry, Mom.  This is definitely my new favorite and I have to tell you, Dennis is gaga for this stuff and he would never eat any of my cornbread before, not even Jiffy mix, which is similar to this, just not as soft.  The Lighter Northern Cornbread recipe on my blog is also crazy good, but it’s lower in fat and sugar so it’s not quite as melt-in-your mouth.  If you’re looking for some full fat goodness, I gotcha covered.

Favorite Cornbread

Printable recipe
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1 ½ cups (6 ¼ oz) all-purpose flour
½ cup (3 oz) corn meal
2/3 cup (5 oz) granulated sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1/3 cup vegetable oil
3 tablespoons butter, melted
2 eggs, beaten
1 ¼ cups milk

Preheat oven to 350F.  Spray an 8×8 baking dish with oil; set aside.  Whisk together dry ingredients in a medium mixing bowl, make a well and add oil, butter, eggs, and milk into the center. Stir well until mixed (batter will be runny – don’t be alarmed!). Pour into prepared pan and bake for 35 minutes. This doubles perfectly for a 9X13-inch pan, but will have to be baked longer (start checking after 45 minutes-I can’t remember how long it took when I doubled it in previous years).

Recipe source: Mel’s Kitchen Cafe

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Basic Buttermilk Biscuits & Sausage Gravy

Posted on September 24, 2012 by Veronica

Happy Monday, my Cornicopi-cats! :)  Today I was just going to share my basic recipe for buttermilk biscuits, but I figured you can’t have biscuits without sausage gravy. OK, so you can, you can have them plain, with butter, with jam, with honey, but once in a while you gotta get your sausage gravy on.  Is it a custom where you live to eat biscuits smothered in sausage or country gravy?  If not, you must try it, at least once.  This is straight up comfort food for me.

I make my biscuits two ways, depending on how much time I want to spend on them.  The first way includes a little bit of folding the dough over and then cutting into rounds. This yields a taller, layered biscuit.  The second way is just dropping the dough onto a baking sheet, then patting it into place with floured hands.  Either way, they are soft and so tender–some seriously good eatin’.

Basic Buttermilk Biscuits

Makes 8-10 biscuits
Printable recipe
Printable recipe with picture

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
½ tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons cold unsalted butter
2 tablespoons vegetable shortening
¾ cup cold buttermilk

Preheat oven to 425 degrees and line a cookie sheet with parchment.

Measure the dry ingredients into a food processor or bowl and pulse once to combine. Pulse or cut in the butter and shortening until fats are the size of peas. Dump the contents into a bowl and stir in the buttermilk until dough is moistened.  You can pulse to combine in the food processor, but it is too easy to overwork the dough so I like to stir it in by hand.  At this point you can either 1) drop the dough in mounds the size of your choice onto prepared baking sheet. With floured hands, pat the tops and sides of the dough until they take on more of a shaped appearance.

Or 2) dump dough onto a floured surface and lightly flour the top.  Knead a few times (careful, don’t knead more than ten turns) and roll out to 1” thick.  Using a 2 ½” biscuit cutter or glass, cut out rounds going straight up and down without twisting the cutter, place on baking sheet, and brush tops with beaten egg if desired (this will make the tops golden but doesn’t change the flavor).  Bake for 10-12 minutes.  Serve warm with butter, jelly, or…

Suzie’s Sausage Gravy

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1 lb. good quality sausage roll, like Bob Evans
¼ cup all-purpose flour
2 cups milk
salt and black pepper to taste
Prepared biscuits

Crumble and cook sausage in large skillet over medium heat until browned. Stir in flour until dissolved. Gradually stir in milk. Cook gravy until thick and bubbly. Season with salt and pepper. Serve hot over biscuits. Refrigerate leftovers.

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Lemon Zucchini Loaf

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Veronica

I’m not a huge fan of typical zucchini bread that is scented with fall spices.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ll gobble it up if it’s nearby, I mean it does have sugar in it, but I’m the kind of gal that doesn’t (usually) enjoy soup or cinnamon/nutmeg/cloves/allspice-laced treats in hot weather.  Maybe I had soup for lunch yesterday, and made a big pot of Suzie’s soup last week, and some mouth-watering gingersnaps that same day.  But still, I (usually) prefer summery foods in the summer and fall-ish foods in the fall.

This zucchini bread?  100% summer!  Nice and tart and sweet and you can’t even taste the zucchini, it just adds moisture and some pretty green flecks.  If you peeled them first, I bet you picky eaters wouldn’t even guess there were any veggies in it.  Not that the zucchini makes this health food by any means, but it is a very summery, tasty way to use up this proliferous summer squash.  It’s so soft and tender, it’s pretty much like eating lemon loaf cake!  Thank you, NancyCreative, for this wonderful recipe!

Lemon-Zucchini Loaf with Lemon Glaze

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2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup buttermilk
Zest of 1 lemon
Juice of 1 lemon (or 2 Tablespoons lemon juice)
1 ½ cups shredded zucchini

Preheat oven to 35o degrees. Grease and flour a 9×5″ loaf pan; set aside. In large bowl, blend flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside. In medium bowl, beat 2 eggs well, then add oil and sugar, blending well. Add the buttermilk, lemon zest & juice, and blend everything well. Fold in zucchini and stir until evenly distributed in mixture. Add this mixture to the dry ingredients in the large bowl and blend everything together, but don’t over-mix. Pour batter into prepared loaf pan and bake for 45 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean (if your oven tends to run hot, check the loaf after 40 minutes). Cool in pan 10 minutes, then remove to a wire rack and cool completely. Once the loaf is cool, make the glaze…

Lemon Glaze

1 cup powdered sugar
Juice of 1 lemon (or 2 tablespoons lemon juice)

In small bowl, mix powdered sugar and lemon juice until well blended. Spoon glaze over cooled loaf. Let glaze set, then serve.

Recipe source: very slightly tweaked from NancyCreative

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Whole Wheat Potato Bread

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Veronica

You can thank The Secret Recipe Club for bringing me out of hiding this week! If it weren’t for being in the club, I’m sure I’d have gone to bed early last night (long day) instead of scheduling this to post.  So hopefully you’re more thankful about that than I am-LOL! ;)

This month I was assigned to The Vanderbilt Wife.  Yay, another blog that starts with “V” (you might not be aware, but we are an endangered blog species, though not as bad off as blogs beginning with  “X” and “Z”)!  Jessie is also a sister in Christ, so let’s give a little HOO-WAH for that too.  Or maybe you could just wait while I do it.  HOO-WAH!  So lovely to meet you, Jessie!

Anyway, my assignment came right after a failed attempt at 100% whole wheat bread.  It was supposed to be the best whole wheat bread ever…but it was not.  So when I saw Jessie’s beautiful Fluffy 100% Whole Wheat Bread, I freaked.

“Dennis, guess what she has on her blog?” I shrieked.

“Light and fluffy whole wheat bread?” he guessed without even glancing over at my computer screen.

(From that you can assume correctly that I had made it very obvious how deeply disappointed I was with the dense and yucky-tasting loaves I’d just made.)

“YES!” I screamed.

And I proceeded to make the recipe.  Three times.  It makes three loaves per recipe, so I made nine loaves of whole wheat bread within the span of two weeks.  Unfortunately, I never got the bread to stay risen once it started baking so those nine loaves weren’t as light and fluffy as I’d have liked.  Each batch started out so high and promising…

only to let me down half way through baking.

*sob*

Since I couldn’t consult Jessie to see if she had any suggestions (in the SRC, you don’t alert the blog you’re assigned to because it’s meant to be a surprise on reveal day, and I couldn’t ruin the surprise by asking her for help), I never got the recipe to turn out for me,  but it did work for her so please visit her blog to see how light and fluffy her loaves are.  I’m bound and determined to get the same result and will post the recipe on my own blog once I’ve got it figured out.

Since I started out with a yeast bread recipe from Jessie’s blog that I couldn’t get to turn out right, I went with another yeast bread recipe of hers that included some white flour (white flour helps because the gluten develops better and easier than with whole wheat).  I’ve been wanting to try making potato bread for years, interested in how the potato would affect the texture, so I was excited to see she had a whole wheat potato bread recipe on her blog.

Let me tell you, making those nine failed loaves was totally worth it since they eventually led me to this recipe.  (Also, those nine loaves, though deflated, were delicious and still fairly light, and all were eaten by my family who praised it highly.)  This is the lightest, softest bread I have ever made that has whole wheat in it!  It is so soft, in fact, that it’s hard to hold on to it while slicing without smashing it (I used an electric knife after the first slice, and highly suggest it if you have one–it makes the slices nice and even without crushing the bread.)

It is delicious and is perfect for making sandwiches, with a little more nutrition than plain white bread.  Jessie said it made killer grilled cheese sandwiches, so I put it to the test with some pepper jack cheese.  And I concur, KILLER!  I really hope you try this!

Whole Wheat Potato Bread

Printable recipe
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1 medium potato
1/3 cup butter, softened
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg, beaten
2 ¼ teaspoons (1 envelope) active dry yeast
½ cup warm water
3 cups whole wheat flour
1 ½ to 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

Peel the potato, cut into cubes, and boil in a small saucepan until very soft. Drain, reserving 1 cup cooking liquid. Mash the potato in a small bowl and let cool slightly.

Cream butter, sugar, salt, and egg with an electric mixer. Add potato and mix well.

In a small bowl, put the ½ cup warm water and sprinkle the yeast over it. Let is sit for 10 minutes, then add to the potato mixture and beat until combined.

Change beaters to dough hooks and set mixer to 2. If you don’t have dough hooks, you will use your hands from this point forward. Add 2 cups whole wheat flour alternately with the 1 cup cooking liquid*, mixing/kneading well after each addition. Gradually add in the remaining flour until the dough starts to clean the side of the bowl. When that happens, let mixer go an additional 2 minutes. If kneading by hand, knead it in the bowl for about five minutes, or turn out onto a floured surface to knead. My dough was still a bit sticky when I stopped adding flour, but if I picked a ball off and rolled it in my hands, it did not stick to my hands. That is my test to know when I can stop adding flour, even though I really wanted to add more to keep it from sticking as I kneaded. I dealt with it and just scraped my hands off afterward. :)

Once your dough looks a little shiny, you’re done. If it doesn’t look shiny, just let it mix or knead it by hand until it does.
Place the dough in a greased bowl, cover with a towel and place somewhere warm. I like to preheat my oven to 350F for one minute, then turn it off and place my bowl in the oven. Let rise for an hour or until dough is doubled.

Punch dough down; divide in half. Shape into loaves by pushing each half into a rectangle, rolling it up, pinching the seam, and tucking the ends under. Place in two greased loaf pans (I slathered mine generously with softened butter). Cover with the towel again and let rise another 30-45 minutes or until doubled again.

Bake at 350 for 25 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from pans and rub the tops with a stick of cold butter. Set on a wire rack to cool

*Notes: Make sure your cooking liquid has cooled to about 115F before adding to the bread dough. If it is too hot, it will kill the yeast.

Recipe source: The Vanderbilt Wife

If you’d like to check out the other Secret Recipe Club submissions, click the link below!


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Honey Whole Wheat Beer Bread

Posted on March 28, 2012 by Veronica

Sheesh, I know what you guys are thinking. That with all the alcohol-laden recipes I’ve been posting lately, I must be a secret raging alcoholic! Well, I promise I’m not.  While I will take a sip once in a while, I generally dislike it on several levels. Besides the taste, and abstaining for scriptural reasons like not wanting to cause a brother to sin against their conscience (1 Corinthians 8:9-13), I’ve seen firsthand the effect it can have on a person’s health and on a family if abused, and I steer clear of alcohol so that I don’t continue that legacy.

However, while I have a personal distaste for it in its pure state, I do have quite a fondness for adding it to my baked goods. A little bit can really intensify the flavor in a recipe, and the baking (and cooking) process eliminates the alcohol content so that it will not have an intoxicating effect on your body.  Win-win!

Because of my fondness for baking with it, you really might think I had an alcohol problem if you took a look in my cupboard! I’ve got rum, bourbon, and brandy upstairs (great for so many things, including a fantastic fruit cake recipe I’ll be sharing come October–it takes two months to make), and I keep a few beers in the basement. Beer is my least favorite alcohol, but I make sure I always have a few on hand because one of my favorite breads happens to be beer bread. Go figure.

Beer creates magic when you put it in a quick bread, supplanting a yeasty flavor that quick breads lack, and it’s just so delicious! I’m very excited about my newest variation on beer bread (I can not believe this is my fourth beer bread post! Stop the madness!) because it is not only delicious, but healthy!

My favorite beer bread has white flour, butter, and white sugar in it, but I wanted something more wholesome this time so I used white whole wheat flour, canola oil, and honey. I was so delighted when I sliced into this loaf and took my first bite! I couldn’t believe how soft, tender and moist it was, and the flavor was incredible. Very yeasty, with a mild sweetness.  I think that honey and beer were meant to come together in bread!

You may remember the leftover Guiness I was going to throw out because I’d already made cupcakes and brownies and couldn’t take it any more. I’m so glad I decided to use the last of it to make this bread because it added a much more intense yeasty flavor to the bread than what I usually get from the lighter colored beers I use and it was quite lovely! But if you have a lighter beer, don’t make a special trip to the store, it will work just fine here and your bread will be much lighter in color (if you use white whole wheat flour like I did), and you might fool healthy-phobic people into thinking it’s white bread.

And lest you think that the beer-haters in your family won’t dig this, just remember I hate beer, and it literally makes my husband gag to even smell it.  (Remember when he threw up after I served him vodka sauce on his spaghetti?  Yeah, alcohol and him do not mix!)  But we both love this bread.  I think you will too.

Honey Whole Wheat Beer Bread

Printable recipe
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3 cups white whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon aluminum-free baking powder, such as Rumford
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg
¼ cup canola oil
1/3 cup honey
12 oz. (1 1/2 cups) beer

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Butter or oil a loaf pan and set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside. In a smaller bowl, beat the egg until uniform in color, then whisk in the oil, honey, and beer. Pour into the larger bowl and whisk well to combine. Pour into prepared pan, smooth the top, and bake for 50-55 minutes, or until golden brown and a tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from pan and cool for at least 15 minutes prior to cutting. Wrap leftovers in plastic wrap or keep in a Ziploc bag with the air pressed out. This bread freezes well too, just slice it before you freeze it and you can take it out slice by slice, as you need it.

A Veronica’s Cornucopia Original

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White Wheat Bread

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Veronica

I’ve been posting a lot of soup recipes lately, so I figured a good bread recipe was in order.  After all, that’s why we make soup in the first place, right?  To go with our bread?

Dennis and I actually haven’t had any bread for the last 22 days, and won’t have any again for the next twelve.  We started the 17 Day Diet at the end of January, and this bread was the last thing I made as a temporary farewell to high-carbohydrate foods, knowing our mouths would not enjoy it for another month or so.  This diet cycles in 17-day increments and during the first two, there is no bread.  We are eating so good that I don’t miss it, but perhaps this spectacular recipe helped with the separation anxiety.  It was so delicious that recalling it makes me smile even a month later!  It also helps that I got the original recipe, which I adapted to the one I’m sharing here, from a friend (thank you, Tracy!), so it gives me the warm fuzzies all around.  You just can’t beat the combination of friendship and warm bread.

While this bread still does not beat out my number one favorite to date, Honey Oatmeal Bread, it is a very close second.  I was very impressed with how soft and tender the bread is, and the flavor, as with all homemade bread, is of course incredible.  It goes very well with soup, or just slathered with butter as a meal.  Not that I speak from experience or anything.

White Wheat Bread

To ensure success, make sure all your ingredients are at room temperature before you start. Cold will inhibit the yeast’s growth.  If you’re in a hurry, you can quickly bring the egg to room temperature by placing in a bowl of hot tap water for five minutes before cracking, and can warm the milk by zapping it in the microwave, stirring every 30 seconds until lukewarm.

Printable recipe
Printable recipe with picture

1 package (2 1/4 teaspoons) dry yeast
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 cup warm water (105-115 degrees)
1 cup milk, room temperature
1/4 cup vegetable or canola oil
2 tablespoons honey
1 egg, beaten, room temperature
1 3/4 cup white whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 1/4 – 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

Combine yeast, sugar, and water in a large bowl; let stand five minutes. Add milk, oil, honey & egg; stir well. Stir white whole wheat flour and salt into yeast mixture. Gradually stir in enough all-purpose flour to make a soft dough.

Turn dough out onto a floured surface & knead until smooth & elastic (about 8-10 minutes.) (Tracy says it will only take a few minutes to do this if you use a bread hook on your Kitchenaid.) Place in a well-greased bowl, turning to grease top. Cover and let rise in a warm place (85 degrees), free from drafts, for 1 hour or until doubled in bulk.

Punch dough down, and divide in half; shape each half into a loaf. Place in 2 greased 8 1/2 by 4 1/2 by 3 inch loaf pans (I used 9×5 which seemed to work well, but they’ll probably be higher with the smaller pans). Cover and let rise in a warm place (85 degrees), free from drafts, 45 minutes or until doubled in bulk. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes or until loaves sound hollow when tapped. Remove from pans and cool on wire racks.

Makes 2 loaves.

Recipe source: adapted from a 1986 Southern Living Magazine, shared with my by Tracy R.

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Double Chocolate-Rum Amish Friendship Bread

Posted on December 6, 2011 by Veronica

It’s been a while since I posted any Amish Friendship Bread recipes, and that’s because this is the last one I made and I wanted to save it for December, since the flavor combination reminded me of Christmas.

Are you one that identifies certain foods with certain seasons and holidays, like I do?  For me, pumpkin and pies are fall and Thanksgiving.  December and Christmas is cookies, chocolate, and anything spiked with alcohol.  Like this bread!

This was actually my favorite variation that I came up with, though I haven’t made very many yet.  The bread is so incredibly moist, is nice and chocolatey with a punch of rum and just a hint of cinnamon from the sugar coating.  Very festive, and so yummy!  This would make great gifts, and I plan to break out one or two of the starters I froze in order to give some away this year.  (If you don’t have any starters in your own freezer, you can click here to learn how to make your own.)

Double Chocolate-Rum Amish Friendship Bread

Printable recipe
Printable recipe with picture

¼ cup sugar
1 tablespoon cinnamon

1 cup Amish Friendship Bread starter (or whatever is left after you’ve divvied it up)
3 eggs
1 cup oil
½ cup dark rum
¼ cup Dutch process cocoa
1 small box instant chocolate pudding
1 cup sugar
2 cups flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

¼ cup mini semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Combine sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl. Generously butter two loaf pans, then dust with the cinnamon sugar. Tap out excess and save for topping.

Whisk the eggs into the starter, then whisk in the oil and rum. Add everything but the chocolate chips and whisk until blended. Stir in 1 cup chocolate chips. Divide batter between pans, then sprinkle remaining cinnamon sugar over the tops. Sprinkle mini chocolate chips over the top and bake for an hour. Cool in pans for 10 minutes, then turn out to cool completely on wire rack.

Recipe source: adapted from Friendship Bread Kitchen

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Buttery-Soft Beer Bread

Posted on November 15, 2011 by Veronica

One of my all-time favorite recipes on this blog is for Buttery Beer Bread, which is slightly sweet with a delicious yeasty flavor, and a thick, crunchy, and buttery crust.  The only downside to it is that it is best fresh from the oven and does not store well, so it’s a little hard to fit into a diet plan because we usually end up splitting the whole loaf between us and polishing it off in one sitting.  (Avoiding dry leftover bread is perfection justification for the overindulgence, no?)  If you’ve made this bread, you know that eating half a loaf of it is a lot easier to manage than one would imagine.  In the interest of trying to shrink our midsections, however, we try not to pull that stunt too often.

Deciding I needed a soft beer bread that stored well so that we could enjoy it for several days versus five minutes, I instinctively knew (well, hoped may be the better word) all I had to do was add an egg and blend the butter in with everything else instead of pouring it over the top.  And voilà!  I was right.  I love being right.  Especially when it results in something so delicious!

This bread has the same flavor I fell in love with in the original beer bread, the beer giving it a nice yeasty flavor despite this being a quick bread containing no yeast (another bonus-fresh bread in under an hour!).  But it is a million times prettier (smooth top versus major bumpiness), the texture is velvety soft when fresh from the oven, and the crust still has just a bit of that buttery crunch to it.  And it fulfills the reason for the modification: it stores well and stays soft and moist!

While I might still make the original if we have company over since there would be less risk of leftovers, and I adore that thick, crunchy & buttery crust, this is the one I’ll be making most often because the texture is so wonderful and its ability to stay that way upon storage robs me of the justification for polishing off an entire loaf in one sitting.  Which I may not be so thankful for, but my hips surely are.

*Despite this loaf storing well, we still ate half of it as soon as it was out of the oven, so I only had half a loaf (OK, maybe a little less than half, truth be told) to photograph the next day.  Sorry.  Our stomachs got in the way of the interests of my blog!  At least we didn’t eat the whole thing this time. At least not all at once.  :)

Buttery-Soft Beer Bread

Printable recipe
Printable recipe with picture

3 cups self-rising flour*
1/4 cup sugar
1 (12-oz) can beer
1 stick (1/2 cup) salted butter, melted
1 egg, beaten

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray a loaf pan with cooking spray and set aside.

Whisk the flour and sugar together in a large bowl. Add beer, butter, and the egg, and whisk well to combine. Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 45-50 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from pan and cool on a wire rack for at least 15 minutes before slicing.

*I know it’s weird, but I really feel I get the best results using self-rising flour for this bread. However, if you do not have it, you can replace it with 3 cups all-purpose flour, 1 Tablespoon baking powder and 1 teaspoon salt instead. I recommend using a baking powder without aluminum, such as Rumford, particularly in this recipe since you need so much of it. The aluminum has an aftertaste and can foul up baked goods which call for quantities in excess of 1 teaspoon.

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