Wholesome Whole Wheat Bread

Bread bread bread . . . I love you so!  One of my favorite appliances in the kitchen is my breadmaker because it allows me to make delicious, healthy loaves without actually knowing how to bake.  I have a whole collection of flours and love to experiment with mixing them to come up with something new.  With very few exceptions, there is no "bad" bread: even my total fails are good in my book.  I prefer dense bread with nuts or seeds mixed in, but that doesn't go over well with the rug rats in my house.  So, to keep the peace, I compromised with this recipe.  I mixed whole wheat, spelt (super healthy) and garbanzo bean (high protein) flours.  It's denser than, say, Wonderbread (not that my kids have had that for years), but still soft enough that it gets gobbled up by my boys. 

1 cup unsweetened almond milk, room temperature
2/3 cup lukewarm water
2 tablespoons Earth Balance, room temperature
2 tablespoons agave (or honey)
2 teaspoons salt
2 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup spelt flour

¾ cup garbanzo bean flour
2 1/4 teaspons active dry yeast (1 packet)

Optional add-ins:  3/4 cup old fashioned oats (or and combination of nuts and seeds you like)

 

1. Place all ingredients in the order they are listed into the baking pan of your bread machine up to add-in ingredients (if using).
2. Follow the directions on your machine for rapid whole wheat bread, 2 pound loaf.  Don’t forget to select crust color (I chose “light.”)

3.  When prompted, add in your oats or seeds or nuts (if using).

4. Remove from machine when done and allow to cool on a baking rack for at least one hour.

 

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I’ve Got a Pantry Full of Healthy Junk, and I Want Cookies!

Tahini Cookies.


This recipe literally came from two jars sitting side-by-side in my pantry: tahini and Nutella. Before I made these cookies, I’d never used either one. The tahini was purchased as part of my initial “pantry-stocking” when I became a vegetarian. The Nutella? I had a coupon and it was free. To the left of these jars, on the same shelf, was a bag of muesli. Voilà! A cookie was born!

This cookie doesn’t necessarily require strict adherence to the following recipe. Adding and subtracting a little will change the density of the cookies—a little more tahini and Nutella and the cookies flatten quite a bit; more oats and these puppies stay put. Whatever happens (as long as you don’t burn them) they are too good to share. I’ve made these twice for one of my best girlfriends and she hides them from her family as if she’s Gollum with Precious. She also has a name for these cookies, which I can’t quite post here in its entirety. Suffice it to say these cookies have a nice fiber-y effect.

I double the following recipe. When the cookies are cooled put them in an air-tight container. They’re better the next day.



6 tablespoons tahini
2 tablespoons Nutella (vegan recipe for Nutella available here)
½ cup honey (or agave to veganize)
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
1½ cups quick cooking oats or muesli (increase to 2¼ cups for denser cookies)
¾ cup trail mix of your choice. (I used Whole Foods’ deluxe trail mix from their bulk bins. It has mixed nuts, seeds, dried fruit, oats and chocolate chips)



1. Preheat the oven to 350°. Cover cookie sheets with parchment paper (in my step-by-step picture I only greased the cookie sheets, but the bottoms of that batch burned quickly).
2. In a medium bowl, stir together all the ingredients. Decide how big you want your cookies. You can drop by tablespoon or by a ¼ cup measure. Either way, they should be 2” apart.
3. Bake for no more than 8 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are slightly brown. You might want to do a test cookie to determine how long you want to bake them for; the bottoms can burn quickly.
4. Cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes before removing to wire racks to cool completely.

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