I love to bake eat bread- especially when it is fresh out of the oven. My sister-in-law makes the best wheat bread (it's not 100% wheat). She makes it ALL THE TIME- it's all her family eats. I have made it before but I much prefer her to make it for me. Her recipe also make a lot of bread and my oven is terrible! Even when I cut the recipe in half, 3 loaves, it doesn't seem to bake right (I KNOW I need a new oven). So in my search to find a smaller, all wheat recipe I came across some interesting information about grains.
from LeAnna at A Small Snippet:
When you buy white flour in the store, or eat products made with white flour, it does nothing good for your body. It's like eating empty calories. All of the healthy vitamins and minerals that are found in the wheat have been taken out to give white flour a longer shelf life. The bran and germ that is taken out is used as feed for cattle, producing a whole other money making business. So white flour is really not good nutritionally. You see how it says "enriched"? Well, back in the 1920's, when people starting realizing they could make quite a business of creating flour with a long shelf life, therefore taking out those nutrients, all kinds of diseases began to increase, which were traced back to the lacking nutrients in the new white flour. The companies were unwilling to let go of their cash cow, so they enriched the new white flour by replacing 4 of the 25-30 nutrients that were removed to hush the screaming crowds and put a temporary bandaid on some of the diseases that were plaguing the nation at that time (for ex: beriberi and pellagra were plaguing the nation- which were directly related to a vitamin B deficiency, so one of the four vitamins and nutrients they added back in was vitamin B.)
So...why not just buy whole wheat flour from the store? Well...it IS better than white flour, but once the kernal of grain is broken open to make the flour, it immediately begins to oxidize...meaning that within 72 hours of breaking open the kernal, or grinding the grain into flour, 90% of over 30 nutrients are gone.
VERY INTERESTING, right?!
All that to say... I would LOVE to have a mill and grind my own grain the day that I bake bread or make pancakes but I have to save my $$! The nice thing is that we have a Great Harvest Bread Company nearby. All of their bread products are made from fresh ground grain AND you can purchase their fresh ground flour. It would be cheaper (in the long run) to get a mill but for now I am experimenting with recipes to see if I would actually make everything from scratch.
I purchased the Bread Beckers bread bible and made their "slightly sweet wheat bread" recipe. It was easy and delicious. It is perfect all wheat sandwich bread. My kids love it. I will be making it again.
While I was waiting for my bread to rise I decided to throw together some granola. I am all about a recipe, not winging it, so I hopped on pinterest and looked up one of my recent pins. It is actually the granola recipe my friend Sara threw together. Here it is...
Homemade Granola
4 cups of Old Fashioned Oats
1/2 cups sliced Almonds
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 TBSP vegetable oil
1/4 cup honey
2 TBSP pure maple syrup
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1-1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Combine the oats, almonds in a large bowl, and set aside. In a saucepan, combine brown sugar, oil, honey, maple syrup and cinnamon--bring it to a boil. Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla. Pour over the oat mixture, and stir it well to coat. Spread the granola in a large, shallow baking pan--and bake it at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Cool and add the raisins and dried cranberries. Store in an airtight container.
It's good, my kids enjoyed it on their yogurt, but I would love to find one without sugar.
The third recipe I tried was kale chips. Now don't get freaked out. Yes, kale is that weird, curly, leafy veggie that people always skip over in the produce isle. It is not good to munch on unless you doctor it a bit. Here is what I did (recipe from here)...
Kale Chips
1 bunch of kale
olive oil
garlic salt- careful, too much is terrible!
Take the leaves off the stem. Wash and dry kale (in a salad spinner). Place in a bowl and drizzle with oil. Sprinkle garlic salt over the top. Mix it up with your hands. Place on a cookie sheet, not crowding the kale (1 bunch did 3 cookie sheets). Bake at 400 for about 8 minutes. Store in a bag.
They are SUPER healthy and SUPER yummy! Trust me. I challenge you to make them.
