Saturday, September 10, 2016

BAKING DAY

Saturday often becomes a day of baking here.  Today was no exception.  Here's the haul:

The Saskatoon muffins are my regular recipe, which I call "Better Blueberry Muffins," originally from a bag of Rogers flour but I added ingredients.  This basic recipe can be adapted to other fruits and also makes a very nice pumpkin/date muffin.

BETTER BLUEBERRY MUFFINS

Place in a large bowl--
1 cup of quick oats
2 cups of white flour
1/2 cup of whole wheat flour
1 TB baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon.
Mix all dry ingredients well.  Add:
1 cup of low fat yogurt
Mix a tsp. of baking soda in with the yogurt.
Add:
 2 eggs,
3 TBS olive oil (light tasting)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 to 2 cups of fresh or frozen blueberries (or Saskatoons)
enough skim milk to make a fairly thick batter.

Spoon into muffin pan lined with parchment muffin cups.  (Parchment muffin cups peel off the muffins very easily.  No comparison to plain paper muffin cups!)
Bake at 350º for 25 to 28 minutes.
Makes 12 fairly large muffins.
Cool.

These muffins freeze and thaw well.  Parchment muffin cups can be reused if removed and shaped again.  If you lay them flat, they're pretty hard to get back into the muffin tin.

The Boston Brown Bread recipe is from the More With Less Cookbook, published by Herald Press in 1976.  This is the first cookbook that I was ever interested in.  I still use certain recipes and this Boston Brown Bread is one of my favourites.  It uses no sugar, no fat and no eggs.  Sweetening comes from molasses.  If you'd like the recipe and can't source it, let me know by email and I'll add it to a post.

The loaves of 50% brown bread are from my own recipe.  I load the ingredients into the breadmaker and run the short dough cycle.  If you use the longer dough cycle the texture of the bread is a little finer.

HOMEMADE BREAD
(Load in order suggested by your bread machine.)
12 oz. lukewarm water
1 egg
3 TBS Canola oil
Combination of whole wheat and white flour to add up to 4 cups.
2 TBS sugar
1 tsp. salt
1/4 cup of flax seed, ground in a spare coffee grinder  (Leave some seeds whole.)
(2 TBS wheat gluten -- to help the bread rise.  This can be omitted.)
2 tsp. bread machine yeast

When the dough cycle is complete, divide the dough into two equal parts, form the parts into loaves, grease the loaves and place them in parchment lined glass bread pans.  Let rise for approximately 45 minutes.  Bake in a 350º over for 30 minutes.  Remove from pans and cool on wire racks.  When cool, store in plastic bags.  Freezes well.

I grind my own whole wheat flour from organic Hard Red Spring Wheat, using a Whisper Mill that we bought in 1996 for $400.  Have used it for pretty much all our bread since then.  I find that whole wheat bread (even 100% whole wheat) rises significantly better if the flour has just been freshly ground.

Now cut the "heel" off your fresh bread and spread some butter and home-made raspberry jam for a mouth-satisfying treat--no matter what time of day.  ENJOY!

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