It Starts with Bread

I don’t know Vim and Vigor, but I felt their presence this early morning upon awakening. I decided to bake some bread.

Eating well, feeling healthy, enjoying early morning sunrises over the water. And so I begin blogging about the art of living, and living green.

Today I do not begin the journey, but I do start recording it in a new way. Welcome. It will be a long, wondrous, and beautiful trip.

Crack open your cans of Kool-Aid and get ready for some fun.

My bread making was not a laborious process of kneading, waiting for it to rise, sprinkling flour all over my floor. Before I went to bed last night I threw a bunch of ingredients into the bread machine and hit the “delay start” button. Hence the wake-up at 5:00 AM with the machine’s quick beeps as it kicked on. By the time I actually rolled out of bed the bread hadn’t baked yet, so I took it out from its last rise cycle and plopped it into a pan (see pic). After a little tinkering, the loaf can then look pretty, and avoids the giant brick effect that most bread machines give to bread.

The bread’s now baking and smells fantastic. I made up this recipe by riffing on a version of a 7-grain bread… instead this one is more like seed bread, and the cocoa gives it a richness and a nice dark color.

the recipe:
Super Seed Bread
1 1/2 c. warm water
2 T vegetable oil
1 T honey
1 1/2 c. whole wheat flour
1 c. bread flour
2 t cocoa powder
1/8 c. corn flour
2 T flax meal
1/4 c. oatmeal
2 T wheat berries (I had tried to sprout wheat berries, but they’re irradiated, so now need to find creative ways to use them up)
2 T quinoa (uncooked; they sprout/cook during bread-making)
1 T caraway seeds
2 T sesame seeds
2 T sunflower seeds
1/4 c. gluten
1 1/2 t yeast

Put into bread machine and let it do all the work. After the second rise cycle, place into a pan or onto a cookie sheet. Shape into whatever loaf shape you desire – you might want to add an extra bit of flour to the pan so it doesn’t stick to your fingers. Bake at 375 for 50 minutes.

So… here you have it. Seed Bread!

Carpe Breakfast.