HBinFive: Soft Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread

Our current bread project for the beginning of February (wait--February--does that seem wrong to anyone else?) was to make a whole recipe of Soft Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread dough found on page 92 of the Health Bread in Five Minutes a Day book. From that batch, we were to make a loaf of the sandwich bread and a couple variations using the dough. I'm still going back and forth on whether to make the Apple Strudel bread that sounds so tasty because we're trying to lose a few pounds here, and I think that might be too big of a temptation!

In making the dough, I decided to do a couple things to slim it down a little. Instead of the oil it called for, I used applesauce that I canned last fall. It had a little bit of sugar and cinnamon in it, but I figured not enough spices to affect the bread. And since the applesauce was lightly sweetened, I left the honey out of the dough recipe as well. I didn't choose to change the eggs around because we are simply inundated with eggs here and any recipe that uses multiple eggs is a good thing here. We're doing Weight Watchers here, and by using their online calculator and my tweaks to the recipe, I figured that with the big recipe divided into thirds and a loaf giving about 15 slices, the point value was about one point per slice.

I planned to try making the rolls with the fresh dough, but the dough wound up way too sticky to work with fresh. So I just made a regular loaf of bread. It rose like nobody's business. I couldn't believe the heights it attained in the 40 minutes of rising time the recipe called for using fresh dough. It was overlapping my pan! The bread itself turned out very moist and I wondered if I should have baked it for the longer bake time in the recipe, but I pulled it out after 45 minutes. I'm guessing it met with my family's taste tests because the loaf was demolished in one day! Ivy was horrified to think I used applesauce in it, but realized she couldn't tell when the bread was done. Although she loves the applesauce, something about the idea of putting it into bread instead of the oil didn't set right with her. "Not in bread!"

After the dough was chilled, I made the rolls. It was still pretty sticky, but far more easy to handle than before refrigerating. I also divided it into eight portions instead of six because that brought the point value down a point per roll. I think maybe I should have gone for the six rolls, though, because these look a little small. As you can see in the picture, the dividing into equal portions bit kind of slipped right by me. I wanted to sprinkle with sesame seeds, but realized I was out. So I used Italian herbs instead. I am going to pick up some Boca burgers or something light to fill them with for dinner tonight. They came out nice and soft and will hopefully make it until dinner time if I can keep the kids off them. They have a better chance since Paul isn't at home today.

So I have enough dough for one more loaf of bread. I'm still playing with whether or not to make the apple strudel bread. I figure if I leave out the nuts, that will make the bread a little lighter, but then again nuts are so yummy and they are good for you. Maybe I should make it and slice it into portions and wrap and freeze. Then we could just count our points for it, but wouldn't be tempted to polish off a whole loaf. I do like to save a few points for a snake in the evenings between dinner and bedtime. I'll decide later. I couldn't make it not if I wanted to because I need to buy some apples when I go shopping as they disappear far too quickly here.

Check out what others did with this dough by visiting the HBin5 Bread Braid hosted at Big Black Dog.

While fiddling with the recipes and trying to make them more diet friendly, I realized the original dough recipe from the first book, Artisan Breads in Five, only works out to around one WW point a slice if I make three loaves from the recipe. So I've made that several times recently. Yesterday I made two loaves in the morning, plus the little bit left of our whole wheat bread and by evening I had to do another loaf so we'd have bread for today. Paul thinks it is the best bread I have made, but I'm not happy with using it all the time as our standard bread recipe because it isn't made with whole wheat. The discussions on the HBin5 group have me thinking of buying a grain mill to have freshly milled flour to use for our bread. I'm pretty much decided, but haven't ordered yet. I'm thinking of the K-tec kitchen mill, but if anyone has any tips or suggestions, feel free to leave them. I like the price of it (under $200) and that it is adjustable for the fineness of the flour. I found a place that I can get a 45 pound bag of hard winter wheat for around $50 shipped.