Baking and Breaking Bread!

Baking bread today! It's one of my favorite things to do - love the smell and love, love love fresh baked bread. This recipe is a new one; it's close to the one I normally use, so I decided to give it a try. Talk about easy!! No excuses for anyone anymore -

From the package of Fleishmann's Rapid Rise Yeast  - Highly Active Yeast, I found this very simple recipe. For those of you who think homemade bread is too much work - No kneading involved!

Whole Wheat Batter Bread

4 cups Whole Wheat flour
2 envelopes Fleishmann's Rapid Rise Yeast
2 t. salt
1 1/2 cup water
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup honey
3 T. butter or margerine
1/2 cup wheat bran

Combine 2 cups wheat flour, undissolved yeast and salt in a large bowl. Heat water, milk, honey and butter until very warm (120 to 130 degrees). Add to flour mixture. Beat 2 minutes at medium speed of electric mixer. Add 1/2 cup flour and wheat bran, beat 2 minutes at high speed. Stir in remaining flour to make a stiff batter.

Place in greased loaf pan. Cover; let rise in warm, draft-free place until doubled in size, about 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Bake 45 minutes or until done (tap the top of loaf for a hollow sound). Cool on a wire rack. If you can.

This is an easy, healthy loaf of bread. You may know by now, I love my Irish soda bread, it's an easy bread and tastes delicious. So, I'm adding my this to my list of fast and easy breads. I cannot live without good bread!!

The above recipe is exactly as it appears on the package. However, I cut the recipe in half for myself and did not have honey, so I used about a teaspoon of brown sugar. Delicious!!!!

I try very hard to make myself walk away, out of the kitchen while bread cools, so I don't ruin it by trying to slice it. This bread cooled well enough, well enough to cut into about half of it, so far. And, I can tell you, it's pretty certain, that I will be making this bread again in a couple of days. Can't seem to keep my grubby hands off...