HBin5 Whole Wheat Master Recipe

The HBin5 baking schedule has officially begun this week! Every other week throughout the year, our baking group will be making a recipe from Zoe Francois and Jeff Hertzberg's new book, Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes a Day.

The first recipe on our 'to-do' list is the whole wheat Master Recipe. From the master recipe we were asked to make one whole wheat loaf, one whole wheat epi or wreath bread and, lastly, Spicy Chili Crackers. You will find my crackers in another post later this week.

I decided to sprinkle my loaf bread with raw sunflower seeds which I always keep on hand for making my homemade granola - a great recipe from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day which happened to be my very first blog post! You can find it here.

I was very happy with the crumb of this loaf. My dough 'rested' in the refrigerator for 48 hours before I baked my first bread. It's not an extremely high loaf and I may add just a little more yeast in my next batch. I'll be very interested to see how the others bakers' bread turned out as far as height. It could have been my cool kitchen as well since it's been so cold outside recently.

It made a wonderful piece of toast with my favorite cherry preserves.

For my second loaf, I first formed a couronne (crown) or circle shape with the dough and then, with a kitchen scissors, made it into a wreath by cutting almost all the way through the loaf and then pulling each cut piece outward.

I found that the wreath didn't form quite as well as it did with the master recipe from Zoe and Jeff's original book, Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day which you can see here. I sprinkled this loaf with poppy seeds and it was not only delicious but beautiful.

Please visit my post Le Fete du Fromage above to see my whole wheat crackers.

If you're interested in joining the HBin5 Bakers here is the link. Michelle at Big Black Dog is our hostess for the baking challenge.

I'm sorry I cannot post the recipe here per the request of the authors since the book was recently released, however, you can visit Zoe and Jeff's site Artisan Bread in 5 or find it on my sidebar favorite list. They occasionally post recipes from their books along with wonderful photos and lots of tips.