Honey Oatmeal Bread

So who doesn't love bread? I have give this bread as gifts with elderberry jelly for Christmas. It was a hit.

I should say that I use my stand mixer for this recipe and have no real idea of how long to knead bread. I have heard others say knead till your arms feel like falling off and then add another minute or so. I did make some sourdough bread recently and that method seem to produce a nice loaf.

Honey Oatmeal Bread

from the KitchenAid Stand Mixer handbook

1 1/2 cups water
1/2 cup honey
1/3 cup butter or margarine
5 1/2-6 /12 cups flour (can do half white and half wheat)
1 cup oats
2 tsp salt
2 pkgs active dry yeast (4 1/2 tsp)
2 eggs (I often forget)

Place water, honey, and butter in a small saucepan. Heat over low heat til the mixture is very warm (120-130).
Mix together 5 cups flour, oats, salt, and yeast in a large bowl. Gradually add the warmed liquid mixture to the flour mixture. And stir till well combined. Add the eggs and combine well.
Stir in as much remaining flour as you can. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead in enough of the remaining flour to make a smooth and elastic dough. (Till your arms are ready to fall off and then a minute more.)
Place dough in a greased bowl and turn to grease top of dough. Cover lightly with waxed paper. Set in a warm place for about an hour or till dough doubles in size.
Divide dough in half. Shape into loaves. Place in a greased loaf pan, cover, and put back in the warm spot for another hour or till the dough doubles.
**Optional--beat 1 egg white and 1tbs water together and brush over the tops of the loaves. sprinkle with oatmeal.
Bake at 375 degrees for 40 minutes. Remove from pans immediately (otherwise the crust gets soggy) and cool.

Served warm or cool, this is great bread. Maybe I'll bring it next month.

I looked in my Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook which said that one would need to knead for 8-10 minutes to get a good loaf. That seems to correlate with the knead till your arms feel like they will fall off and add a minute that others have said.

I am sure this can be modified to use a bread maker too, but as I don't have one I don't know how. If you do, please comment.

Chocolate Milk

My children get up before I am ready to do anything with them. We have a morning ritual of a short video and chocolate milk. I have been using a powdered chocolate milk mix featuring a bunny on the canister. I have issues with high fructose corn syrup and other ingredients I don't recognize on the label. So I was thrilled when a fellow blogger created a chocolate syrup and a chocolate milk that has ingredients I can buy at the grocery store on my own.

I don't feel comfortable copying her post so here is the link. I will note that she uses sucanat which substitutes for sugar one-to-one. Last night when I was making the blender chocolate milk, I used sugar in place of the maple syrup and it was yummy. Abigail complained that after blending there were too many bubbles. I mixed up about half a gallon and after sitting in the fridge all night the bubbles lost their loft and she enjoyed it this morning.

Once or twice a week mixing for a few minutes to give me chocolate milk I understand, totally worth it!

Applesauce Ornaments

These are fun to make and they smell, oh, so good. I don't do anything exactly, but Donna does so I am going to use her recipe and tell you what I do, or don't (other than measure).

• 1 cup applesauce
• 1 cup cinnamon
• 1 cup glue

Mix all together till a dough forms. Roll out. Cut out your ornaments remembering to put a hole for the hanger to go through. Dry.

Since I don't measure my recipe looks more like

• 1 jar of the cheapest applesauce I can find
• 3 large gars of the cheapest cinnamon I can find
• all purpose flour

Mix the applesauce and the cinnamon together. Add flour till the mixture is roll-able. This is best done with a mixer as getting the right consistency takes a while. Continue from above. Usually I am pretty picky about the food we buy, but since these are more for the smell and the fun I don't even look at the ingredient list!