Two Bread Projects

Earlier this week I rediscovered the joys of making yeasted breads.  I try to stay away from it because warm, fresh baked bread never makes for a good weigh in.  I think that I want to play with finding more healthful ways of making bread over this winter.  I really find a lot of enjoyment from the whole process...especially eating it!!

The first foray into baking bread this week was pita bread.  I used to make this once in a while from an old Weight Watcher's cookbook.  I had forgotten all about it until the AllRecipes.com newsletter came with a recipe for Traditional Pita Bread.  It inspired me to pull the yeast out of the freezer and give it a try.

Here's the recipe:

Traditional Pita Bread

Very, very easy recipe.  Everything went well with this one.  I only subbed half the flour and used a white whole wheat instead for that half.  The dough rolled out very nicely and they puffed right up when I baked them.  I let them rise on parchment paper and then used a pizza peel to slide the dough, on the paper, right on my pizza stone which had been sitting in the oven as it preheated to 500 degrees and then for an additional 20 minutes or so just to make sure that the oven was really, really hot.

Here is the result.....

A couple days later I decided to try to recreate a roll that we have bought at Whole Foods in the past.  It's a whole wheat roll with dried cranberries and walnut in it.  I did a search and was surprised to find so many recipes for this type of thing.  I thought for sure I'd have to piece together bits and parts of recipes.  I eventually went with one that really seemed to have everything I needed to recreate it and even more importantly, one that called for ingredients I happened to have here already.

This is the recipe:

Cranberry Walnut Bread Rolls

This recipe was much more involved than the pitas but then again, I think that most other bread recipes are...the pitas were so very simple.  The only things I did differently was add about 4 tsps of vital wheat gluten to the dry ingredients and I sprinkled a bit of Bob's Red Mill 7 Grain Hot Cereal Mix over them after I formed them to give them a bit of texture and crunch on top.  It was hard to knead the cranberries and walnuts into the dough after the first rising but they eventually mixed in evenly....there may still be a few stray walnuts or cranberries on my floor or the far reaches of my kitchen that popped out as I was very patiently working them in.  The rolls baked up very nicely and seem to be a hit with the rest of the family.

Here is the result:

Would I make either of these again?

The pitas...yes, for sure.  In fact, I do want to try to find other recipes to play around with and maybe try some other kinds of flours too.  As for the rolls, probably but they may be reserved for holiday dinners or a special dinner occasion.  I think the cranberries kinda lend themselves to giving these rolls a harversty type of feel and can easily see making them for Thanksgiving or maybe even Christmas if we are having turkey.