Apple Cinnamon Bread

This bread is a HUGE hit with my kids. What better time to make it than fall, when organic apples are around. Yeah, except for this year, they're around, but you have to search for them. Stupid late frost. Cozy up with this bread and a nice warm mug of cider.

Apple Cinnamon Bread
by Amanda @ Natural and Organic Lifestyle

The dough itself makes two loaves. The ingredients below make one loaf. I make one plain and one apple cinnamon at a time. If you'd like two apple cinnamon, double up on the ingredients (apple, cinnamon, sucanat)

Dough from Easy Sandwich Bread 
(optional: when making the dough above, substitute apple sauce for the oil)
1 organic apple, chopped small
1 ts organic cinnamon
1 TB Sucanat (or other organic raw sugar) plus extra for sprinkling on top

Prepare dough and let it rise the first time. After you punch down the dough and split it into two loaves, sprinkle flour on a flat surface and roll out one dough to about a half an inch thick. Sprinkle cinnamon, sucanat, and apple all over the dough. Roll up, pinch ends, and place in greased loaf pan to rise again. Optional: brush with a little butter and sprinkle sucanat on top. Once the dough has risen above the rim of the pan, bake for 35 minutes at 350 degrees. Let cool, slice, and enjoy!

Easy Sandwich Bread

This is a great versatile bread. It makes great sandwich bread. Which is awesome since store bought bread is laden with high fructose corn syrup, soy, pesticides and gmo ingredients, not to mention additives, and preservatives. This bread is so easy to make, there's no reason to buy store bought bread again! You can do other fun things with the dough too...more to come in future posts!

Easy Sandwich Bread
by Amanda @ Natural and Organic Lifestyle

Makes 2 loaves

2 cups warm water
1 TB yeast
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup oil (I use light olive oil)
1 1/2 ts good salt
6-7 cups bread flour*

*The loaf in the picture above was made with unbleached white whole wheat bread flour. You can use straight whole wheat bread flour but you'll want to mix it with another flour. You can also add ground flax as well as other flours.

I use my food processor with a dough blade to mix up this dough. You could also use a stand mixer. My directions, though, will be for doing it by hand for those that don't have either. I have to say, my food processor makes it so easy. I just add all the ingredients and mix until the dough forms.

Add water, yeast, and honey to a large bowl and let it sit for a few minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients in order. Kneed until smooth and it pulls away from the bowl. Cover and let it rise until doubled. Punch the dough down and divide into two pieces. Grease two loaf pans and place dough in each. Let the dough rise until it is just over the rim of the pans. Optional: Brush butter or olive oil over the top and sprinkle with good salt. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Bake for about 30 minutes.

English Muffins

These are great! It's amazing to be able to make English Muffins at home. So many store bought english muffins have high fructose corn syrup, soy products, bleached flour, etc. Even if they don't have those ingredients, they still have preservatives and way too many odd ingredients. So here is the answer, make them at home! You can make these the day before. Don't make the mistake I did the first time and start them at 9am on Saturday morning...yeah, it was noon before breakfast was ready. When I read through the directions completely and saw that the batter needed to sit for an hour, I let the kids have a bowl of cereal while they waited. Once they were finally done though, they were wonderful!
This recipe is a variation of Alton Brown's recipe from Food Network.

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon non-hydrogenated vegetable shortening
1 cup hot organic milk
2 1/4 ts dry active yeast
1/8 teaspoon organic sugar
1/3 cup warm water
2 cups  white organic whole wheat flour (unbleached unbromated un-enriched, you could probably use whole wheat too), sifted
Non-stick vegetable spray
Muffin rings, or mini tart rings, or wide-mouth canning lids


In a bowl combine the hot milk (heat in a pot until steaming but don't let it boil), 1 tablespoon of sugar, 1/4 teaspoon of salt, and shortening. Stir until the sugar and salt are dissolved. Let cool. In a separate bowl combine the yeast and 1/8 teaspoon of sugar in 1/3 cup of warm water and rest for 10 minutes. Add this to the milk mixture. Add the sifted flour and beat thoroughly with wooden spoon. Cover the bowl and let it rest in a warm spot for 45-60 minutes, longer means more nooks and crannies!!!
Preheat a skillet, you want it on about medium low, my electric stove does them perfect at "3", and brush the bottom of skillet with a thin coat of oil. Cook one muffin as a tester muffin before filling your skillet with as many rings as you can. Because the muffins cook for 6 minutes per side, they are easy to burn. You want a temperature that will allow the outsides to brown nicely while the insides are just cooked.
Once your dough has rested, add the remaining 1/2 teaspoon of salt to mixture and beat thoroughly. Coat the metal rings with vegetable spray and place them on the skillet. Using an ice cream scoop, place 1 scoop of batter into each ring and cover with a lid or cookie sheet and cook for 5 or 6 minutes.  Remove the lid and flip rings using tongs. Cover with the lid and cook for another 5 or 6 minutes or until golden brown. Place on a cooling rack, remove rings and cool. Split with fork and serve. Do make sure you split with a fork or you won't have nooks and crannies!
Note: I only had two rings so I cooked two muffins to start, covered them with a small lid, then flipped them and removed the rings so I could start two more. I didn't cover the first two with the small lid again, just covered the skillet with a lid and put the small lid on the two new muffins I was starting. Looks like this (minus the big lid on the skillet):

The muffins didn't come out "perfect circles" not keeping them in the rings, but they were almost perfect, so it was ok. If you have more rings you can keep them all covered with a lid that will cover them all. I keep meaning to buy more rings. Some people use tuna cans where they've taken the ends off both ends....but I worry about bpa in the cans, so I don't recommend that.
Take a look at the label for Thomas English Muffins:

Sorry about the flash glare, I took the pic quickly, people in the store were looking at me rather funny. Look at all these ingredients!!! Soy bean oil and soy flour, both which are not organic and are more than likely GMO. The only soy you want to consume is organic fermented soy products. Then there's the added wheat gluten which is probably one of the causes of rising gluten intolerance. The enriched flour with synthetic vitamins is not a good option. Using your own ingredients is a much better option!

Yummy bread (no-knead bread)

This bread is so great! The only way I can describe it is it's ciabatta-like. Great to sop up sauces, great dipped in olive oil, great with butter. The directions may sound daunting but it really is pretty easy (Unless you take a nap and miss a step...not that I've ever done that or anything).

Ingredients:

3 cups organic white (unbleached) wheat flour
1/4 teaspoon yeast
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 1/2 cups warm water

You will need a covered pot that can go in a 450 degree oven (pyrex, cast iron, stainless steal, ceramic, etc)

1. Mix dough: The night before, combine all ingredients in a big bowlwith a wooden spoon until the dough just

 comes together. It will be ashaggy, doughy mess. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit 12-20 hourson countertop.

2. Shape & preheat: The dough will now be wet, sticky and bubbly. Witha wet spatula, dump the dough into 

a bowl that is coated in olive oil.Shape dough into a ball by folding ends of dough over and tucking it towards 

the middle.Keep your hands wet so that the dough does not stick. Cover dough withfloured cloth and let it 

rest for 2 hours. When you’ve got about a half hourleft, slip your covered pot into the oven and preheat to 

450F.3. Bake: Your dough should have doubled in size. Remove pot from oven (Carefully).
 Holding the bowl of dough over the preheated pot, gently use a spatula toremove dough from bowl and 

dump it into pot. Doesn’t matter which wayit lands. Shake to even dough out. Cover (Carefully, don't forget

 it's hot!).

 Bake 30 minutes. Uncover, bake another 15-20 minutes or until the crust is beautifully goldenand middle 

of loaf is 210F. Remove and let cool on wired rack. If noteating right away, you can re-crisp crust
 in 350F 

oven for 10 minutes.

Tortillas

If you've ever looked at the ingredients on a package of tortillas you know that there is a ton of ingredients in there that really don't need to be. So why not make your own? 4 ingredients, one of which is water. You can't beat that! The following recipe will make approximately 10 6-8 inch tortillas. Smaller is great for soft tacos, enchiladas, for spreads, and to dip. Bigger ones to wrap for burritos and wraps.

4 cups whole wheat flour, unbleached, organic
2 ts sea salt
1/2 cup olive oil
1 cup warm water

Mix dry ingredients. Add the oil and mix until crumbly. Add water and kneed until smooth.

Heat a skillet or flat pan to medium low. Divide into balls about 1/3 cup in size, or slightly bigger than a golf ball. If you would like large tortillas, go bigger. Roll thin on a floured surface. I have a tortilla press but it doesn't really get them as thin as I'd like. So what I do is: Lay a piece of wax paper on my tortilla press, place the dough ball on it, top with another piece of wax paper, press. THEN I roll it out with a rolling pin further. This actually gives it a nicer shape than if I just roll it with a rolling pin. Plus I think it rolls thinner than if I just use a rolling pin. But I'm not the best rolling pin user, so do whatever you like. For years I did it without the press just fine. After you have one rolled out, throw it on an un-greased skillet or flat pan. Cook until you get some bubbles.

Than flip. Cook until you have some light brown spots on the underside, just a few minutes.

(Haha, yes I know that one has a whole, no one's perfect =)  ) Remove from pan and keep under a cloth until all the tortillas are done and are ready to be used. If you are going to be wrapping burritos, wet the tortillas and put in a toaster oven for a few minutes to make them easier to roll, plus they'll stay together really well. This works with ANY tortilla. Never make a burrito without that tip!