All Rise!

I'm breaking down and starting a blog so I can keep my recipes together. Rick's cholesterol has been through the roof so I am cooking and baking at home more to try and control his levels.

I picked up a couple whole grain cookbooks to aid in the effort. I haven't baked bread in many years, so I've been experimenting with different types of flours and baking styles. Since I work full time and our family keeps increasing I'm trying to find the most nutritious and easy recipes I can. Mother Earth News magazine recently did a spread on Jeff Hertberg, MD and Zoe Francois's cookbook line. I picked up "Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day" which contains no knead whole grain bread recipes. To date I have made the following recipes:

• Whole Grain Oat and Molasses bread (my favorite so far)
• Whole grain chocolate espresso bread (really flavorful, though I under baked it so the center was doughy)
• Spelt Olive bread (spelt is an amazing ancient wheat relative)

Today I am making "Sweet Potato Spelt bread". It sounded really yummy and I thought it would go well with the chicken my mom is making for my grandmother's birthday today. The dough isn't as firm as I would like so I'm not 100% sure it's going to turn out as well as I had hoped. I was drawn to this bread because I have been really happy with the flavor and richness of spelt, plus the recipe calls for a whole large sweet potato with skin on. This will ratchet up the fiber content plus be protein and nutrient rich.

I recently picked up a professional grade, series 6 Kitchenaid upright mixer. Love it! The motor is very powerful (525 watts) and mixes up a batch of bread dough in nothing flat without taxing the motor. These breads are more dense (generally speaking) than I am used to so I'm glad the mixer is able to keep up.