Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Ashland Bread

This is the easiest and fastest wheat bread ever!!! LOVE it!!

Ashland Bread
adapted from With Love and Butter
A yeasted batter bread, Ashland Bread receives only one, brief rising and is extremely easy. Yields 2 medium loaves

6 tablespoons raw sunflower seeds
3 cups warm water
3/8 cup honey (1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons)
3 tablespoons quick-rise yeast (or 3 packets/1 strip)
4 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup wheat bran
1 cup wheat germ
4 tablespoons brown sesame seeds
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
Generously grease two 4 x 8-inch loaf pans and sprinkle one tablespoon sunflower seeds in each.
Place the remaining 4 tablespoons sunflower seeds and the rest of the ingredients in a mixer bowl and blend with the dough hook at medium speed for 8 minutes. Divide the batter between the 2 pans. This dough is very sticky so don’t be alarmed. Just plop it in there, it bakes up all rustic and pretty. Loosely drape with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place just until the batter reaches the top edge of the pans. This will take only 10 to 14 minutes if you're using fine-grained whole wheat flour and 20 to 30 minutes with a coarser grind. When you set the loaves to rise, preheat the oven to 400 degree F with the rack in the center position.
Remove the plastic wrap and bake the bread for 15 minutes, rotate the pans, and bake another 10-15 minutes. The bread will be firm to the touch and molasses-colored, but won't rise much above the rim of the pan (don't look for a rounded top). Remove from the pans and cool on a rack but you must eat half of one all by yourself before it cools. Enjoy with butter or cheese

1 comment:

Mary Bergfeld said...

This sounds delicious. This is my first visit to your blog, so I took some time to browse through your earlier posts. I'm so glad I did that.I really like the food and recipes you share with your readers and I'll definitely be back. I hope you have a great day. Blessings...Mary