A warm crusty dinner roll. The one we all reach for as soon as we sit down at a restaurant. There is no reason not to enjoy them at home anytime. This recipe makes 24. Why? Because you will want to stash some in the freezer. They will be ready to go next time you have a steamy hot bowl of soup for dinner, or a bit of gravy or tomato sauce to mop up.
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I am so excited to share with you all a new adventure for The Well Floured Kitchen! I have joined up with a great group of bloggers to do a “Mystery Dish” recipe challenge. Once a month we will be presented with a mystery box of ingredients and each blogger will create a unique and delicious recipe.
Without further ado, the ingredients in September’s box were:
We had to use at least two of these ingredient. I have wanted to create a cheesy monkey bread for a while, so now seemed like the perfect time. Except I had an even more incredible idea…instead of just boring old cheesy bread, how bout’ I throw in some maple glazed bacon. You will want to make this immediately. I would share mine but it’s gone..all gone.. so sad 
Check out the tasty creations of the other bloggers for this month:
I spied some overripe bananas marked down at the store yesterday. I snatched them up planning to make some banana bread for a snack. But I had a craving for chocolate cake.. and so feeling a little crazy, I dumped the cocoa powder right into the banana bread.
That’s about as wild and crazy as it gets around here.
Did I mention I had recently purchased Black Cocoa Powder? See that beautiful deep dark brown color.. that’s from just 1.5 oz of the stuff.
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Meatball subs. I love em’, meatballs are definitely one of my comfort foods. But seriously who can eat them without making a mess? They practically demand that you drip sauce down your chin. And my 7 year old wearing his clean baseball uniform? That was a recipe for disaster, so these open faced sandwiches were my solution.
The kids immediately asked if they should use a fork to eat them. Umm..yes, please don’t try to balance a round meatball on a flat piece of bread….
The smell of bread baking in the oven is one of life’s great pleasures. Sometimes I want a soft sandwich bread, and sometimes I want a crusty bread. Either way, I need the bread to be made around my schedule, and that’s exactly what I can do with this recipe. I often start it before dinner, then I can enjoy a nice piece of warm bread slathered with butter as a nighttime snack.
This bread is perfect for dunking into a bowl of soup, dipping into flavored olive oil, sopping up tomato sauce or making a panini. It tastes best the day it is made, pretty good the second day, perfect for toast on the third day. It can also be frozen. If it is frozen, I will warm it back up in the oven and it will taste good as fresh for dinner. If defrosted and reheated I would recommend using it immediately….
Italian Easter Bread. That’s what my family calls it. My husband’s family insists that it is Portuguese Sweet Bread. My uncle is from the Philippines and is convinced it is the sweet bread of his homeland. Bottom line, I’m pretty sure most cultures have some version of this buttery sugary loaf. Whatever it’s called, it sure is good….
The idea of changing your families diet is overwhelming for many people. Most people have been born and raised during this era of increasingly processed food. It is a little unnerving when you realize that most products in the grocery store are not real food at all, but just a hodge-podge of chemicals. After reading The Omnivores’s Dilemma, I admit I was a little freaked out. What were we supposed to eat? Where was I going to buy it? How will I feed my babies!
Now that I have been down this path for several years, I feel I can offer some encouragement to some real food newbies. First, relax, take a deep breath, it does get easier. You do not need to change everything you eat tomorrow. In fact, I would recommend baby steps. Make one change and stick with it until it doesn’t feel like a “change” anymore. Then pick something else and so on.
The first food I changed for my family was bread. I don’t remember exactly how I decided on bread, but I remember reading the back of the (plastic) package one day and feeling ill. Now mind you, I wasn’t buying wonder bread. I was buying “100% whole wheat” bread, or “7 Grain” or some similar type of hearty bread. Then I found out about what they put into the breads to make them shelf stable.
It makes sense when you think about it. If you buy (or make) a loaf of fresh bread, it certainly doesn’t last longer than a day or two. When did we get to the point where we assumed bread should last weeks?
For our family of five, I bake approximately 6 loaves of bread a week, along with the occasional batch of bagels, tortillas, rolls etc. Yes it is a labor of love. I won’t lie and tell you it takes no time at all. What I will tell you that there is nothing better than fresh bread out of the oven slathered with butter. Even if you just made a couple loafs on sunday (they freeze great), it would be a important start in your food journey.
Here’s my favorite family “sandwich” style bread that I make the most often:
This post is a part of Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday.
This is our family’s basic sandwich loaf. It is simple to make, and inexpensive to boot. Best of all, you can work it into your time schedule. Recipe makes 2 loafs, you could half it, but in my opinion if you are going through the effort you may as well make two. You can always freeze the second loaf.
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Mom of 4, Homeschooler, Amateur Photographer, Lover of all things Green and Organic, Sharing yummy food Read More…