My Version of Homemade Bread

(photo from http://www.deliacreates.blogspot.com/)

I recently tried THIS bread recipe from a blog I like and loved it!!! It's super easy, seemingly "no fail" and makes 3 loaves at a time!! When I want regular sandwich bread I use 1-1.5 cups of whole wheat flour as part of my total flour. One thing she doesn't mention in her blog is that she uses Fleischman's INSTANT dry yeast. The only place I've seen it is at Sams. Instead of kneading by hand as she does, I divide my dough in 1/2 and let my KitchenAid mixer knead each 1/2 for 5-7 minutes with the bread hook. The author, Delia, did a follow up post to answer questions that came in about her recipe, so if you're going to try it, also read THIS. Oh, and I tried the pumpkin bread she made with the recipe... didn't like it... seemed kinda dry.

My version:

Recently Han and I tried the recipe using only the white flour and when we rolled it out we experimented a bit. On two loaves, I tried to imitate the "white chocolate cherry swirl bread" that Great Harvest Bread Co. makes. I melted some butter and brown sugar to make a thick "syrup" and spread it on the rolled out dough, then we sprinkled some chopped dried cherries and white chocolate chips on top and rolled up the loaves. I'd have to say that I think I came pretty close to Great Harvest's bread. The only thing I will do differently on that one next time is to put less of the buttery/sugary spread on and I'll bake it longer. There was an abundance of the gooey goodness, and the loaf was a bit under baked. But it was still yummy!!

On the 3rd loaf we did the same butter/brown sugar mixture then shook a bunch of cinnamon over it and sprinkled some chopped pecans. Made great cinnamon swirl bread that Han gave "100 thumbs up!"