Healthy Bread In Five Minutes A Day, Whole Wheat Master and Four Great Ways to Use It!

I've been known to say that fast food at our house means "cheese and crackers" and having made homemade crackers from the master whole wheat recipe from Healthy Bread in Five Minutes A Day, fast food may become more common. These crackers turned out wonderfully. My daughter, Candace and I experimented with a pasta machine first, which we decided wasn't such a great idea and pushed on to the standard method - - a rolling pin.

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Spread a bit of olive oil on the pastry sheet to give the crackers a crunch as well as keep them from drying out. Roll a grapefruit piece of dough as thin as possible. Brush olive oil flavored with fresh minced rosemary, sprinkle with Paula Deen's House Seasoning and paprika.
2. Cut into desired shapes and move to oiled cookie sheet, placing fairly close together but not touching.
3. Bake for 20 minutes, rotate pan and bake for an addition 10 minutes.
4. Serve with cheese, soup or eat as a healthy snack.
5. Store in a zip lock bag.

What we learned:

• Thin crackers are best.
• Cute cutters don't work on thin dough.
• Getting the right seasoning is everything.

The whole wheat artisan free form loaf has been somewhat of a struggle for me. Not the shaping or baking, but the seeds! The seed mixture that is given in the book has a tendency to burn in my oven. My answer is to throw the sunflower seeds out (too much oil in them) and the next batch I make will not have any flax seeds in them either, they just get too brownish black for my taste. I have had great success with shaping my loaf, dipping it into a bowl of sesame seeds right then, letting it rest for 90 minutes, slashing and baking.

I live at a high altitude and the first several batches of dough resembled hocky pucks. I felt really bad about this until a dear neighbor and excellent baker, Bonnie bought the book and had the same experience-- exactly. I have learned that IF you use freshly ground flour you MUST weigh your ingredients. My amounts are different from the books. If you are interested in what they are feel free to contact me. Cristie at TheTableRunner dot com

The final piece to this post on the master whole wheat dough is the epi, or wheat stalk. It has become one of my favorites. It is shown here with a delicious spread made from a homemade pesto (thanks Bonnie!) mixed with cream cheese--neither lasted long, they just seem to be made for each other.

For many wonderful ideas go to the third bread braid of the Google group for

Healthy Bread in Five at Michelle's blog, Big Black Dogs.