Honey Butter

I decided to make a honey butter to go with my homemade whole wheat bread.  I had this jar of lemon honey left over from a trip to Italy last fall (I know, I know, I’m so cosmopolitan!) and decided to use it.

This is pretty easy – just beat a stick of softened butter with 1 heaping tablespoon of honey and ½ tsp sea salt, and refrigerate until firm.

+

+

=

It’s an easy way to add some extra flavor to bread, dinner rolls, etc.  If you’re really fancy, you can even form it in a butter mold for a special event.

Enjoy!

Honey Butter

1 stick unsalted butter, softened

1 heaping tbsp honey

½ tsp sea salt

·         Beat all ingredients together until blended. 

·         Refrigerate for one hour, or until firm.

Homemade Honey Whole Wheat Bread

Another item on my “to-do” list is homemade bread.  Since I was making soup, I decided to make fresh bread to go with it!  I found a simple recipe on King Arthur Flour to try.

 

I gathered my ingredients – pretty straightforward.  I didn’t have dry milk, so I substituted ½ cup of milk (room temperature) for ½ cup of water.

I stirred together all of the ingredients – this was difficult, and I ended up doing a lot of it by hand.  It didn’t seem to affect the bread at all J

Once the dough was fairly well mixed, I kneaded it on a greased wooden cutting board for 8 minutes.  No pictures of this, but boy were my arms tired!

I placed the ball of dough into a lightly greased bowl and covered with a towel, then let it sit for 1 hour.

It puffed up quite a bit – though hard to tell from this picture.  I should note my kitchen was very warm.

I then shaped the dough into a log and placed it into a greased loafed pan.  I covered the pan loosely with greased plastic wrap, and let it sit for another 1 ½ hours.

At this point, the dough had puffed up quite a bit! 

I baked for 40 minutes at 350 degrees, then removed it to a wire rack to cool.  I also rubbed the top crust with butter.

Once it was completely cooled, I sliced it and topped it with a honey butter (recipe to come later!) and ate it with my vegetable soup.  This was a great, simple recipe for my first time trying bread, and I’m excited to bake more kinds of yeast bread in the future!

Homemade Whole Wheat Bread

½ cup lukewarm water (minus 2 tbsp)

½ cup nonfat milk, room temperature

¼ cup vegetable oil

2 heaping tablespoons honey

3 ½ cups whole wheat flour

1 packet active dry yeast, dissolved in 2 tbsp of the ½ cup water

1 ½ tsp salt

·         In a large bowl, combine all of the ingredients and stir until combined.

·         Transfer the dough to a lightly greased surface, oil your hands, and knead it for 8 minutes,

·         Transfer the dough to a lightly greased bowl, cover it, and allow the dough to rise about 1 to 2 hours, depending on the warmth of your kitchen.

·         Shape the dough into an 8" log. Place the log in a lightly greased 9” x 5" loaf pan, cover the pan loosely with lightly greased plastic wrap, and allow the bread to rise for about 1.5 to 2 hours, or till the center has crowned about 1" above the rim of the pan.

·         Preheat the oven to 350°F.

·         Bake the bread for 35 to 40 minutes, tenting it lightly with aluminum foil after 20 minutes to prevent over-browning.

·         Remove the bread from the oven, and turn it out of the pan onto a rack to cool. If desired, rub the crust with a stick of butter; this will yield a soft, flavorful crust.

·         Cool completely before slicing.

·         Store the bread in a plastic bag at room temperature.

Going Bananas

I love bananas.  However, last week was very busy and I didn’t have a chance to eat most of the bananas I had purchased at the store; they were too ripe for me to eat plain (I’m picky about bananas!) so I decided to salvage them in the form of banana bread!

This is adapted from a recipe I found on allrecipes.com.  It was fairly easy to make.  I had purchased some miniature loaf pans at the grocery store and decided to use those – this recipe makes 4 mini loaves.

First, I got out all my ingredients.

Then I mashed up four bananas.

It gets more appetizing, I promise!

In one bowl, I combined flour, baking soda and salt. 

In a separate bowl, I creamed butter and brown sugar, then added 2 eggs.

I mixed that together and added the bananas, then added the banana mixture to the dry ingredients.

I poured into the loaf pans and popped into the oven.

45 minutes later – voila!  Banana bread!

Next time, I would stir this by hand instead of using a mixer – the batter was a little too liquid and as a result the bread was very dense (at least, I think this is why it was so dense!).  I wrapped the loaves tightly in plastic wrap and froze three of them for later ;)

Banana Bread

2C all-purpose flour

1TSP baking soda

¼ TSP kosher salt

½C unsalted butter, softened

¾C light brown sugar

2 eggs, beaten

3 overripe bananas

·         Preheat oven to 350

·         Grease 4 mini loaf pans

·         Mash up four bananas and set aside

·         In a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt.

·         In a separate bowl, cream together butter and brown sugar.  Stir in eggs and bananas.

·         Stir banana mixture into dry mixture; stir until just moistened

·         Pour batter into loaf pans

·         Bake for 45-60 minutes, or until toothpick inserted comes out clean.  Cool on a wire rack.