HBinFive: Milk and Honey Raisin Bread

This challenge for the HBinFive baking group had two different doughs assigned, but I only did one of them. One of the doughs was the Chocolate Espresso Whole Wheat bread that we had also made mid-February. Although I found that bread particularly tasty, I didn't need the temptation of having it hanging around the house for my to polish off. I'm down almost 25 pounds since January thanks to Weight Watchers and decided not to blow the diet with it!

The milk and honey bread turned out very good, and definitely could have been a diet-breaker if I hadn't manage to muster up some self-control. Recently at the bulk foods store, I picked up a couple different kinds of wheat grains to try out with my grain mill. I looked them up online after I bought them to see how people liked to use them, and it turned out one (Prairie Gold) is used by lots of folks as an all-purpose flour. So I used that for my all-purpose flour in the recipe, and my white winter wheat for the whole wheat flour portion. Also, since everyone in my family seems to complain when I put raisins into baked goods, I subbed with a dried berry blend containing blueberries, cranberries and cherries. But in retrospect, I think I have eaten most of this loaf anyhow and I think the raisins would have had a bolder taste in it and wish I would have just gone with them. The blueberries are pretty tasty to get in a slice, though. And it made a delicious French toast that was definitely worth repeating!

I got a new toy that I was able to use for the first time on this bread--an electric knife. It's amazing! I can't recommend it enough if you are thinking of getting one. I noticed they were marked down to $9 when I was doing my grocery shopping, so I slipped one into the cart. Now that I've tried it, I would have paid twice that price for it! I gave it a trial run with my warm, just baked loaf because I had heard that an electric knife will neatly slice warm bread. I have to admit, I was a little skeptical and not sure what to expect. So to really test it out, I cut off a really thin slice of the warm loaf. It sliced beautifully without tearing up the bread in the least. I can't even slice cooled bread that nicely with my old bread knife. I restrained myself from slicing the whole loaf up then and there (barely!) I was able to cut myself very thin slices of this bread which were quite yummy when covered in the apple jelly that I also made last week.

See what others made this go around by visiting the HBin5 Bread Braid hosted at Big Black Dog.