Bake: Herbed Wheat Buttermilk Biscuits

One of my favorite food bloggers is Rachel Cooks. If you've never seen any of her recipes, you need to check her out now! You can find the original recipe HERE. She posted this recipe recently and her biscuits looked so good I knew I had to try it! I used whole wheat flour in my recipe to make it a little healthier. They're so yummy! Fortunately I had the willpower to put them into the freezer before my husband and I ate them all fresh from the oven!

Keep reading for my version!

Ingredients:

• 4 cups whole wheat flour
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3-5 Tablespoons dried parsley and chives, whatever combo you want
• 12 Tablespoons softened butter
• 1 1/2 cups cold buttermilk
• 2 Tablespoons of melted butter (for brushing biscuits with)

Directions: 

Preheat your oven to 450º F. 

Add all of the dry ingredients together in a medium sized mixing bowl. 

Mix them up.

Add in the wet ingredients. 

Mix well.

Roll it out onto a lightly floured surface. It should be about 1/2"-3/4" thick.

Use your cookie cutter...or in my case, jar lid, and cut out biscuits.

Form extras into dough and roll out again, messing with it as little as possible so you don't warm it up. 

Depending on how thick you make the dough, you can get anywhere from 10-24 biscuits. The original recipe got 8-9 3" biscuits but I made mine thinner and got 24.

Bake in the oven for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown around the tops and edges. If you have two sheets worth, be sure to rotate them halfway through so they both bake evenly. (Sorry for the blurry photos.)

Take them out of the oven and brush butter on the tops of each biscuit. As you can see, they all have character! 

And somehow I managed to get a few monster biscuits in there!

Drool.

These biscuits go well with everything! You could make them into breakfast biscuits, use Italian seasoning for a pasta dinner, add cheddar cheese....oh yum. I think I'll be adding the cheese next time! These biscuits are guaranteed to please either way!

What do you make with buttermilk? Do you have a family recipe passed down for the best biscuits or rolls?

Till next time,
Catherine

Adding Ground Flax to Bulk Your Bread!

About 6 months ago I attempted making healthy whole wheat bread by hand. My first try didn't go so well but after that I must have gotten the hang of it because ever since I feel like each new loaf is an improvement on the last! You can find my original recipe and bread endeavors HERE.  

One of the things that I find essential is adding honey. It gives the bread a little sweetness that goes perfectly with a sandwich or toast or anything! Lately I've also been adding a bunch of ground flax seeds.

The dough is brown because I always use whole wheat flour. If you look close you can see some of the ground flax. 

Here's a better view. I didn't add all that much the first time because I was afraid it would be too noticeable but it's not at all! 

My first loaves with added ground flax were so perfect and delicious! 

Baked to perfection! Golden brown in all the right places! These loaves don't look all that big but I think the flax actually makes them larger too!

Now I dump a lot of flax into the dough. Probably 1/2 a cup? Not sure. I just pour. 

If you make your own bread, I would recommend adding ground flax because it's so healthy for you but your family probably won't even notice it's there! Flax seeds are rich in fiber and omega-3 fatty acids and they're low in carbs! You can't go wrong adding them! You can find ground flax just about anywhere these days. I actually got mine from Big Lots believe it or not! It was Bob's Red Mill ground flax and it was about half of what it normally costs. What a score! Plus it was a huge bag that is lasting me forever! 

I have whole flax seeds as well but I feel like ground flax is easier to add into foods without people being like, "Eww what's this???" I like to be sneaky when I add in healthy foods. Hehe. What they don't know, helps them! I think next time I'll use ground flax and then a small handful of whole flax seeds as well. Ooh maybe I'll buy some oats and make my own honey oat nut bread! Mmm!

How do you use flax seeds? Do you prefer whole or ground? Also, did you catch my two accidental rhymes? I should be a poet! Not. 

Till next time,

Catherine

Bake: Delicious Homemade Bread

So since attempting to make my own bread a couple of weeks ago, I have fallen in love with it! My first loaf did not go well! It was quite sad actually. It tasted good but it was so dense that it was very unappealing! As you can see...it was...flat. It was supposed to be a rosemary olive oil bread.

I was quite disappointed but I kept trying! My next loaf was just right! I was absolutely thrilled.

 Since then I have made about another 8 loaves. My husband and I are going back to Hanover (North of Richmond, VA) where our families live this weekend so I thought I'd bake them extra bread. So far I've made two honey wheat loaves, another two loaves worth of dough are rising for cinnamon wheat bread, and I will make one more whole wheat loaf when the next two are done.

Very quickly I will try and give you all the baking instructions for making your own bread! It's totally worth it and it's a zillion times healthier for you than store bought bread with God knows what in it!

The initial recipe I started with was from one of my favorite blogs, FabuLESSly Frugal. These gals have so much knowledge and are such a help! The recipe is found here. I didn't go by the recipe exactly, simply because I didn't have all of the ingredients! Here's what I did. If it worked for me, it should work for you!

Ingredients (for 1 loaf of bread):

• 1 1/4 cup of warm water
• 1 Tbsp (or 1 packet) of active dry yeast
• 1/3 cup brown sugar (they note that brown sugar freezes better than using honey)
• 2 3/4 cups of whole wheat flour 
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 Tbsp butter

Ingredients (for 2 loaves of bread):

• 2 1/2 cups of warm water
• 2 Tbsp active dry yeast
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 5-51/2 cups whole wheat flour
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 Tbsp butter

UPDATE: I also add about two big spoonfuls of honey and maybe 1/4-1/3 cup (I don't measure) of ground flax seeds. The honey adds a lovely hint of sweet and the ground flax adds a boost of fiber!)

What you'll need:

• Big mixing bowl
• Olive oil or baking spray
• Big spoon (I use a wooden spoon)
• Bread pan
• Measuring cups and spoons
• A clean dish towel or saran wrap
• A sheet of aluminum foil

Directions:

Mix the warm water, yeast, and brown sugar together in a large bowl and let it sit (proof) for 10 minutes. This is necessary for the yeast to activate. Make sure that your water is warm to the touch, but not hot.

After the 10 minutes are up, add in the flour, salt, and butter. Mix until a nice dough forms. Once it's all formed together, sprinkle flour onto your kneading surface and then place the dough on top. Knead the dough for about 10-15 minutes. It's a great arm work out! Continue to add flour as you feel necessary until the dough is not quite sticky anymore. Form into a ball and put into a greased bowl, covered with a towel or saran wrap for about 1-1 1/2 hours or until the dough has double in size.

After about an hour or so, it should look more like this. Sorry there's no before picture to show the previous size of the dough.

Once the dough has double, punch it down and roll it out into a rectangle, about 1/2 inch thick. Roll it up, and pinch/seal off the sides and place it into the bread pan. Cover again and let it rise to double, usually about 30 minutes. Once it's done rising, place it into the oven at 375 degrees and bake for about 20-30 minutes. On FabuLESSly Frugal they recommend placing a sheet of aluminum foil, shiny side out, on top of the loaf after about 10 minutes to keep the outside from browning too much. You may or may not have to do this step.

The picture is of a cinnamon sugar loaf that my husband had the grand idea for! For this one, just sprinkle cinnamon to cover the flattened dough, and then sugar. I used about 4-5 Tbs of raw sugar and it tasted great to me, but of course you can add your own to taste! I plan to try it with raisins next!

After you've followed all these steps (so simple!) then you should get a beautiful, delicious loaf of bread like these!

These two are honey wheat loaves. Yummm.

And this is what my cinnamon loaf turned out to be! It was heavenly, especially right out of the oven!!

This is a plain whole wheat loaf of bread, but I got "creative" and cut some slits in the dough before putting it in the oven. I think it looks so cool! Like it's fresh from a real bakery!

UPDATE: I've actually decided to always cut the slits in the dough when it's a honey wheat loaf so that I don't get it mixed up if I'm baking different kinds together.

As you can tell, I love baking bread! It's so much fun and I can't wait to try all sorts of new types of bread! What kinds of bread have you made? What's your favorite recipe? Send them my way and I'll try to bake them too!

Carb overload on it's way to my house? Eh, who cares! It's healthy and delicious!!

Do you prefer to bake your own bread or buy from the store? What's your favorite recipe or brand?

Till next time,
Catherine


I've linked up to Less Laundry, More Linking #4 with Life After Laundry and Sensational Creations!