Get Set Sunday: Baking Bread

by Erin at SlimSavers.com

I like routine. I schedule my day so I can get things done and so my family knows what to expect (and where to find me). I work full time so weekday evenings are spent making a dinner in under 45 minutes, eating at the table, and spending time with my peeps. The weekends have a lot of family time, too, but also household chores like cleaning, grocery shopping, and prepping food for the week. Almost every weekend, you can bet I’m baking bread, usually two types.

Sandwich/Toast bread

I make a whole wheat bread for us to use to make sandwiches and toast (my son’s new obsession). My preferences for this kind of bread are that it not have texture or taste like sandpaper and that it weigh less than a sheet of plywood. For this week, I made the honey whole wheat sandwich bread over at 110 Days of Real Food. It is really good and perfect for toast, which I enjoyed this morning! I assume it’ll hold a sandwich together nicely, too. I’ll let you know later this week.

Modifications:

• used coconut oil instead of olive oil
• ran it through the dough cycle of my breadmaker, put it in a loaf pan to rise for 30 minutes, and baked it at 350 degrees for 35 minutes instead of letting it bake in the breadmaker — I HATE the weird shape it turns in to.

Sweet bread

My faaaaaavorite sweet bread is cinnamon raisin. Yum!! But, on Friday, my friend at work gave me two bananas that wouldn’t have lasted ’til Saturday. Ding ding. BANANA BREAD!! Mmmmm. I like to use the sweet bread as toast with some cream cheese, as french toast, or as a special surprise holder PB & J at lunch. I used the Whole Wheat Banana Bread recipe at Deliciously Organic.

Modifications:

• used 2 1/2 cups of whole wheat flour instead of whole wheat pastry flour (I couldn’t find any! Grrrr)
• used 1 cup of raw sugar (which I think is what “whole can sugar is”?)
• ‘made’ the buttermilk by putting 1/2 teaspoon of vinegar in a measuring cup, pouring milk in to hit 1/4 cup, and letting it sit five minutes before putting it in with the other ingredients
• baked for a little over an hour

Do you bake bread regularly?

Since I have my wonderful Cuisinart CBK-200 2-Pound Convection Automatic Breadmaker, I love baking bread. If I had to knead it and all that, I guarantee we wouldn’t have homemade bread every week. I’d spend my time making something else from scratch. Time is money!!

Read more at SlimSavers.com.

Erin and Joline, both health and wellness junkies, spent many years pinning down the truths about eating healthy and inexpensively. Both feel the it’s-too-expensive-to-eat-healthy excuse is untrue and infuriating.