whole wheat molasses bread

This here is breakfast bread. I advise eating it with a thick smear of cream cheese or some salty butter and a nice cup of tea on the side.

Since it’s the weekend, I bet you have a couple of hours to spend so why not make this savoury/sweet loaf to kick start your weekend.

It’s super pumpernickel-y (Dan laughed when I said that out loud but it’s true and I don’t care if pumpernickel-y isn’t a word. Add it to your vocabulary. You’ll need it to describe this bread) and kind of an unexpected flavour explosion.

It’s an interesting quick bread since there’s both whole wheat flour and cornmeal in there, making it all deep and earthy tasting. Your wet ingredients are just buttermilk and molasses. Lots of thick, gooey molasses. There’s no other sugar in it so it turns out somewhere in between savoury and sweet. It’s not going to taste how you expect so wrap your head around that fact now.

Cut yourself a slice, whack on the cream cheese, pour a cup of milky sweet tea and enjoy. Seriously, it’s a meal in and of itself. That’s my kind of bread.

Whole Wheat Molasses Bread

from Joy the Baker

makes one 8×4 or 9×5-inch loaf

Ingredients

1 2/3 cups buttermilk or plain yogurt
2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup cornmeal
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup molasses

Directions

Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Grease and flour an 8×4 or 9×5-inch loaf pan. Non-stick baking spray works well too.
In a large bowl, whisk together flour, cornmeal, salt and baking soda.
In a small bowl whisk together buttermilk or yogurt and molasses.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and fold to combine. The batter will be slightly thick, but not dry. Spoon batter into prepared pan and place in the oven. Bake loaf for 45 minutes to an hour. Depending on how evenly your oven bakes, you might want to rotate the loaf in the middle of baking. Be careful though. Don’t manhandle it too hard or it might deflate.
When a skewer inserted in the center of the loaf comes out clean, remove the loaf from the oven and allow to cool for 20 minutes in the loaf pan. Run a butter knife along the sides of the pan and carefully invert onto a wire rack.
Loaf will keep, well wrapped at room temperature for up to 4 days.
Serve with cream cheese or salted butter.

Category: recipe | Tags: baking, bread, breakfast 6 comments »

6 Responses to “whole wheat molasses bread”

elizabeth
January 22nd, 2011 at 10:38 am
Oh…my. That looks outstanding.

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Erica
January 22nd, 2011 at 11:56 am
book marked! I love quick breads like this. Dense and semi sweet- perfection!

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Katharina
January 22nd, 2011 at 12:25 pm
Wow! This recipe sounds great :D And a breakfast bread? I love breakfast breads! There’s a really great recipe for French honey-spiced bread that I blogged about before (I recommend it hehe). Anyway, you said it was pumpernickel-y? Well, one of my favorite grilled cheese sandwich recipes involves pumpernickel bread. Bread + mango chutney + sharp cheddar!

XOXO

p.s. you my dear, have an award in my last post! ;)

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Heather
January 23rd, 2011 at 12:47 pm
Oh man that looks so good! Wish I had some right now!

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Holly
January 24th, 2011 at 11:43 am
yes.

yes, yes, yes, yes and yes.

i love molasses. i love cream cheese. i love cornmeal. i am pretty sure i would love this bread.

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Sisters Running the Kitchen
March 3rd, 2011 at 2:49 pm
wow this is great looking. it is SO simple, too! win in my book ;) enjoy your weekend angharad!

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