Swope Bread. Sweet and hearty.

I really have to stop baking bread.  It's too damn good and I can't stop myself from eating (lots of) it.  I'm so drawn to it... check out the latest loaf I made: Swope Bread.  I've been tooling around online and I'm trying to figure out what is Swope Bread.  Any ideas?

All kidding aside, starting this week I am giving up bread.  Not forever, mind you, but just until I can have it without obsessing over it.  I can do it; I've done it before.  It's the getting there part that stinks :(  I have to keep in mind it's just healthier for me.

That said, this bread is wonderfully delicious and easy to make.  No waiting around for the yeast to kick in and rise the dough.  I estimate this bread takes about 10 minutes to prepare and another to bake.  Easy-peasy.
SWOPE BREAD

You can find the original recipe here from allrecipes.com - one of my favorite all-time food sites.  I've made so many things from this site.  YUM!

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups all-purpose flour

4 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup white sugar

2 teaspoons salt

4 teaspoons baking soda

4 cups buttermilk

DIRECTIONS:



Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease two 9x5 inch loaf pans.

In a large bowl, stir together all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, sugar and salt. In a separate bowl, dissolve baking soda in buttermilk. Stir buttermilk into flour mixture. Beat well. Pour batter into prepared pans.
Bake in preheated oven for one hour.

PERSONAL NOTES:
This recipe makes two loaves so I just halved it to make the one.  After all, it's bad enough I'm eating most of it on my own anyway... Oy.

Oh, I mixed half spelt flour and half all-purpose flour.  Spelt flour works wonderfully in breads.

Mix-n-Match: Fried Quinoa Bites with Ka-Pow Sauce

Cooking is getting dangerous.  This is two days in a row now I've used the fryer.  Two days in a row I produced outrageous results from my efforts.  It's dangerous because of how good it all tastes, but how bad it is for the waistline. Boo.

Today we're talking about a combination of two recipes: Baked Quinoa & Cheese meets Ka-Pow Shrimp.
I had leftovers from the baked quinoa dish so I decided to scoop out little balls of the stuff and drop them in the deep fryer for a couple minutes.

Here are the results...

Fried Quinoa Bites & Ka-POW Sauce:

To make this dish...

Follow the recipe for the Baked Quinoa and Cheese here and then go to the Ka-Pow Shrimp recipe to get the mix for the breading as well as the Sriracha hot dipping sauce.  YUM!

Pumpkin Bread. The season isn't quite over yet.

I am trying to hold onto the winter squash season as much as possible.  It's no secret I love all things pumpkin and winter squash.  And since I've been experimenting with spelt flour this week, I decided to combine the two and see what would happen if I made bread.  The whole place smells yummy!
You can find the original recipe here from happycow.net 

PUMPKIN BREAD

INGREDIENTS:
2-1/4 cup whole wheat or spelt flour
1-1/2 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 15-ounce can pumpkin puree
1 cup water
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 egg equivalent of egg replacer
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup raw nuts, chopped (optional)

(Makes 2 loaves)

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 350F degrees.

In a large bowl combine flour, spices, baking powder, and salt.

In a second bowl mix pumpkin puree, sugar, egg replacer, and oil. Pour wet mixture into dry mixture and mix together.

Spoon content into 2 greased and floured bread pans. Top with nuts.

Bake for 50-60 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted comes out clean. Cool thoroughly before removing from pan.

PERSONAL NOTES:

I don't like using nuts too much so I just omitted them.  The bread is still really tasty.

Spelt Bread. Super easy and delicious.

In an effort to cut down on all the refined foods I've been enjoying lately, I decided to give spelt a shot to see what it was like.  In a nutshell: it's wonderful.  I was expecting some dense and too-nutty-flavored bread.  But it really isn't like that.  It bakes up light like whole wheat bread would and I even added ground flax seeds to it and it still wasn't overpowering.  It's just... really, really good!

You can find the original recipe here, from allrecipes.com

And as it turns out, spelt is better for you (as I'd been hoping).  Check out the article here to see some benefits of using spelt flour over whole durum wheat flour.

SPELT BREAD

INGREDIENTS:

8 cups spelt flour

1/2 cup sesame seeds

1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste

1 tablespoon blackstrap molasses

2 teaspoons baking soda

4 1/4 cups milk

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease two 9x5 inch loaf pans.

In a large bowl, mix together the spelt flour, sesame seeds, salt, molasses, baking soda and milk until well blended. Divide the batter evenly between the prepared pans.

Bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until golden. Placing a tin of the same size over the top of the loaf while baking gives it a lovely crust.

PERSONAL NOTES:

I didn't have sesame seeds so I used ground flax seeds.  Big YUM!  The bread came out great - it's just like regular, whole wheat bread.  Another big plus: it's so easy to make.  So easy.