Blueberry Granola Bars

These blueberry granola bars, filled with toasted oats, unsweetened coconut, almonds, sunflower seeds, and pine nuts, will become your favorite chewy and delicious snack. 

These blueberry granola bars are so easy to make and so delicious! They are also nutritious (pretty much) and filling too, the perfect back to school on-the-go breakfast or before football or soccer practice snack.

Trail Mix Cookies

These Trail Mix Cookies are loaded with nuts, seeds, dried fruit, whole grains, and dark chocolate, which makes it easy to justify having them for breakfast, or anytime of the day.

These trail mix cookies are loaded with lots of delicious and nutritious ingredients, including dried cherries, toasted sunflower seeds, and toasted walnuts. Just like trail mix, there are just enough chocolate chips to make you want to keep having more.

Sourdough Pain de Campagne with Toasted Pumpkin, Sunflower, and Flax Seeds

I am so excited about this Sourdough Pain de Campagne with Toasted Pumpkin, Sunflower, and Flax Seeds. This bread is amazing. 

This bread is loaded with seeds, yet it is very airy with a lacy crumb.

Muesli Rolls | the Babes Get Healthy... and I'm a Babe!

These muesli rolls are full of lots of good things, such as oats, walnuts, flaxseeds, pumpkin seeds, and dried fruit. But the best thing is....

Senfbrot - German Mustard Bread

The recipe for this Senfbrot, or German Mustard Bread, was discovered by my friend David of Hearth Baked Tunes on a German bakers association website, in German of course, and proportioned for commercial bakers.

Granola Energy Bars

Granola Energy Bars filled with toasted oats, almonds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, coconut, and a mixture of dried fruit. 

Granola energy bars. From my kitchen. With brown rice syrup. Something is completely askew in the universe.

Multigrain Bread with Sunflower and Flax Seeds | Naked Bread

This Multigrain bread with sunflower seeds and flax seeds (and whole grains) is densely packed with seedy goodness. I recently read on the Interwebs that both flax seeds and sunflower seeds are super foods (and if you read it on the Internet, it has to be true!).

If you toast your sunflower seeds in a hot dry skillet, you will get an amazing flavor from them. Just be sure to watch them or they will burn very quickly. Trust me. I speak from experience.

This bread is great as a sandwich bread. You can slice it very thinly and it holds up very well. I used it to make one of my guilty pleasures, a tuna and egg salad sandwich. If you have not tried this combination, do not turn up your nose. It's great.

Pedestrian? Bourgeois? Try it in the privacy of your home. No one has to know.

Naked bread you say?

This bread was meant to be covered in lovely seeds and oats. The post from which this recipe was inspired has a gorgeous photograph of such a loaf (posted at the beginning of the recipe below).  Here's what happened to my topping when I de-panned the bread.

I need to work on this.

Multigrain Bread

Adapted from Pastry Affair

Ingredients

9 1/2 ounces (2 C) bread flour

6 ounces (1 1/2 C) whole wheat flour

1 C old fashioned oats

1/2 C sunflower seeds, toasted

2 T flax seeds

1 1/2 tsp active dry yeast

1 1/2 tsp salt

12 ounces of lukewarm water

Sunflower seeds, flax seeds, and rolled oats for coating the top of the bread. (Good luck.. try an egg wash to help the toppings stick... I didn't. Obviously.)

Instructions

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer, whisk the dry ingredients together (except the toppings). 
2. Mix in the water with a dough whisk or large spoon until all of the ingredients form a shaggy ball. 
3. Knead the dough with the dough hook for about 7 minutes. If kneading by hand, knead for 10 minutes. 
4. Place the dough into an oiled bowl or dough rising bucket, cover with plastic wrap, and let it rise for about 2 to three hours, until doubled. 
5. Deflate the dough and let it sit, covered, for 10 minutes. 
6. Press the dough into a 9 inch square and roll it into a tight log and place it into an oiled 9 inch by 5 inch loaf pan. 
7. Brush the loaf with and egg or egg white wash and sprinkle the loaf with the toppings. 
8. Cover the loaf with plastic wrap and let it rise for 30 to 60 minutes, until doubled. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C)
9. Bake for 40 to 50 minutes, until lightly browned and the interior reaches 195 degrees F. 
10. De-pan and cool on a cooling rack for at least an hour. 
11. Make yourself an egg and tuna sandwich. Yeah-ah. 

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Kontinentbrot | Continent Bread

My friend David of Hearth Baked Tunes contributed this recipe to the Artisan Bread Bakers Facebook page for the February Bread of the Month. David is currently on a quest to bake the perfect German breads (brots). His favorites include a rye starter, lots of rye flour, and lots of seeds. Hearty breads. It's been fun to see what comes out of his oven. Did I mention that he is a Dead Head?

I've had my challenges with breads with a high percentage of rye flour. Rye flour can get very sticky when kneaded.  Fortunately, Cathy of Bread Experience attempted this recipe first, so I was able to benefit from her recommendations.

One other thing.... this recipe calls for pumpkin seeds, which I love. A lot. But I couldn't find my pepitas. While rummaging through the bottom of my baking freezer (did I just admit I have a freezer for baking ingredients?), I came across some pine nuts and decided to substitute them. They worked out well, although next time I might toast them first and add a bit more salt to the dough to compensate.

Verdict: This is a very dense bread that lends itself to salty toppings and cheeses. It goes well with salty/savory toppings such as feta, Boursin, or tapenade. After the second day, I recommend slicing it thinly and then freezing the slices for toasting and topping.

Here is my version of this bread. To see David's version, click here. To see Cathy's version, click here. I don't know if mine turned out correctly, but it's pretty tasty.

Kontinentbrot

Ingredients

Sourdough Build

110 g whole rye flour

11 g sourdough starter

85 g water

Quellstuck (soaker)

77 g whole rye flour

22 g rolled oats

35 g pumpin seeds (or pine nuts)

20 g sunflower seeds

13 g flax seeds

15 g toasted sunflower seeds

127 g water

Final Dough

73 g whole rye flour

106 g bread flour

10 g salt (I would recommend a bit more)

All of the sourdough build

All of the Quellstuck

4 g yeast

138 g water

Instructions

Make the sourdough build

Mix all of the ingredients in a bowl, cover and let it rest for about 14 to 16 hours.

Make the Quellstuck

Mix all of the ingredients, cover, and let it soak overnight at the same time that the sourdough build is fermenting.

Make the dough

• Mix all of the ingredients (including the sourdough build and quellstuck) in the bowl of a stand mixer until mixed. Don't overmix.
• Cover and let the dough rest for about 30 minutes. 
• Form the dough into a ball and place it into a banneton/proofing basket, spray with spray oil, and cover with plastic wrap. Proof for for about an hour in a warm environment. I let it rise in a warmed microwave. (Don't microwave the dough, heat water in the microwave to warm the oven and then add the dough). 
• Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F with a cast iron Dutch oven in it. When it is time to bake the bread, remove the Dutch oven, turn out the dough into it (no need to slash the dough), cover, place the contraption into the oven, and bake for 15 minutes.
• Remove the cover from the Dutch oven, reduce the oven temperature to 425 degrees and bake for about 20 to 30 minutes more. The internal temperature of the bread should be 205 to 210 degrees F. 
• Allow the loaf to cool completely on a wire rack. 
• Wrap the bread with a towel and allow it to sit for about 24 hours before slicing. 
• Enjoy!

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Toasted Sunflower Seed and Pumpkin Seed Bread with Rye Sourdough

Supposedly pumpkin seeds have properties that are very good for you. Sounds good to me. Good excuse to eat more of this bread. It is loaded with them.

BBA Challenge #34 Pumpernickel Bread #35 Sunflower Seed Rye

Over the course of one year, I baked the 42 recipes in Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice. In order. It was an excellent course in bread baking. I highly recommend doing something like this at least once.

I own a lot of cookbooks. An embarrassing amount of cookbooks. Thank goodness for Amazon Wish List and libraries, or I would be in big trouble. That being said, it was so satisfying to have finally done something like this.