Embarassingly Easy Honey Wheat Bread

One of the consequences of being unemployed is that you have all this free time to do whatever your heart wants to do, and my heart wants to cook and bake and spend my waking moments in the kitchen (if I'm not in front of the computer trying to look for long-lost high school classmates).  This makes my college-age daughter, home for the summer, happy as a clam for about 3-4 days, then she starts to plead with me to stop else she tips the scale more than she wants to.

So I thought today I might try to back off a bit by making a brown wheat bread (it's got to be healthful, right?) that's also delightful to eat.  The following is a recipe that a fellow TFL'er pointed me to when I inquired about a honey wheat bread similar to the one The Cheesecake Factory used to make.  The recipe is called Outback Steakhouse Honey Wheat Bushman Bread from www.cdkitchen.com.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cup water, warmed
• 2 tbsp. butter, softened
• 1/2 cup honey
• 2 cups bread flour
• 2 cups wheat flour
• 1 tbsp. cocoa
• 1 tbsp. sugar
• 2 tsp. instant coffee
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2 1/4 tsp. yeast
• 1 tsp. caramel color (optional;  I used raw buckwheat honey instead)

Directions:

1. Place all the ingredients in the bread machine and process on dough setting.  The dough will be a litte on the wet side and sticky.

     2.  Let rise for one hour.

    After one hour bulk fermentation....

    3.  Punch down and divide into 2 large or 4 medium or 8 small portions.  Shape into logs.

    4. Cover and let rise for one hour.

Oh wait!  While I was in the kitchen, my husband had sneaked into the car dealer's in the guise of taking advantage of the Cash for Clunkers Program, and brought home this beauty to test drive. Hearing my shriek, my next door neighbor gave a thumbs up and said it would totally look good on me!  So off we went!

    5. About an hour later, after dough has doubled, place logs in parchment, slash, mist, then bake in hot stone at 350F for 20-25 minutes. 

      6. Serve warm with butter!

The requisite crumb shot.  Don't be fooled- crumb may look tight, but this is one soft bread, slightly sweet from the honey, and just delightful for snacking even unadorned.  I'd try doing a preferment next time to inject some flavor complexity to the finished bread if I weren't the impulsive, down-to-the-last-minute type of baker.