A Booker Breakfast

I've given this bread recipe to everyone and their dog, I think. It's so healthy and good, and it's what we have for ALMOST every single breakfast of our lives. With some natural peanut butter and homemade strawberry jam, it doesn't get much better - and it sticks with us better than anything else we ever have. And with my boys - I want something to STICK....at least until 9:00a.m. where we often have a second breakfast!

This bread recipe can be tweaked to your heart's content. As long as you keep roughly the same proportions of dry and wet ingredients - you can do a lot of interchanging of ingredients. I rarely make the same exact recipe. With the exception of the yeast, salt, and wheat gluten - mix it up! Change out the honey for molasses; or the seeds for wheat or oat bran - go wild! Any way you make it, it's fantabulous.

Here goes - my CURRENT fave way to make it:

3 tsp. yeast
2 heaping TBlsp. wheat gluten
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1/3 cup ground flax seed
1/3 cup wheat germ
1 1/2 cups old fashioned oats
2 cups unbleached white flour
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour (or white whole wheat flour for a fluffier bread)
1 TBlsp. poppy seeds
1 TBsp. sesame seeds
1/3 cup honey
1/3 cup olive oil
1 2/3 cup water

Here's where I cheat hardcore:

Dump all of the ingredients in roughishly that order into your bread maker, put it on the dough cycle, come back in 1 1/2 hours and flop it into a greased bread pan. Let it rise as high as you like, and bake at 350 degrees for 33 minutes exactly.

Voila! Delish.

Or - if you have no breadmaker, get a nice little arm workout and knead away till it's at the elasticity that you'd like - let it rise once in a greased bowl. Gently form it into your loaf pan and let it rise for the second time there before you bake.

Again. Delish. It just takes a lot longer........