Healthy-ish Banana Bread

Every family has its own recipes which are "sacred". In my family, it is the Banana Bread Recipe of my Aunt Grace. Her banana bread is dense but very moist and is not like the cake type of breads that most people make. It was a staple at all our family get togethers, especially Thanksgiving and Mother's Day which were generally spent at Grandma Hopkins' house. Hubby loves it warm with butter melted on top. I like mine cold from the fridge with cold butter spread on top! We still love each other! :o)

About Thanksgiving time I decided to try adding half store bought ww flour to make Banana Bread without telling anyone. I did and noone could tell the difference! Hubby was surprised when I told him. So, I got to thinking, what if I went all whole wheat? Then it dawned on me, why not substitute honey for the sugar? Well, the results today were pretty good. It doesn't hold together quite as well as the recipe made with at least half white flour, but it tastes good. What I find when I adapt some recipes is that it doesn't taste the same, but it doesn't taste bad either. I want to make whole foods that my family will enjoy - if they are not enjoying their nutrition at all, then what is the point? They'll just leave what I teach them as soon as they can! So, I'm trying to find things that will satisfy certain food cravings without making us sick and fat.


I loved being able to use the Vita Mix to mix up all the wet ingredients and blend in my cyrstalized honey, so that it was all smooth without grit!

This is what the batter looks like going in. It's a lumpy pancake batter texture.

Here are the loaves coming out. I should have taken them out a couple minutes earlier but had my hands tied when the timer went off and had a brain slip! It's okay, just a little darker crust on the bottom and sides.

It looks all "mooshed" together because we could not wait until it cooled thoroughly. Hubby thought it was a great treat since this is how he likes it anyway. Recipe Follows:

Theresa's Healthy Banana Bread

In a large bowl, mix together:

4 c white whole wheat (pastry) flour

1/2 t salt

1 t BP

2 t Baking Soda

2 c walnuts, chopped (optional or may substitute other "lumpy" ingredients)

In 2nd bowl mix wet ingredients, then add to dry ingredients:

2 eggs

1 1/4 c raw honey

2 c sour milk or Buttermilk (I actually used sour buttermilk)

4 over ripe bananas, squished

Put into 2 Large loaf pans or pans of varying sizes. Bake at 350* for 45-60 minutes depending on loaf size.

©2008 My Journey To Wholeness

Taco Pizza

Nummy! Nummy! This is what we had for dinner last night! After eating homemade pizzas I really cannot stand eating the ones from take out or restaurants. Sometimes they taste good going down but my stomach doesn't like it afterwards and they always leave an aftertaste. So, since we have been married, we have been making homemade pizza using a recipe from our Zojirushi bread machine booklet. I wanted to try making it even healthier and read about using hard white wheat berries to make flour for pizza dough. Our co-op only had soft white which is better suited to quick breads, pie crust etc. But I decided to try it anyway and will do some looking around to see if Whole Foods or another local store has it before I try to find an Internet source.

Our first wholegrain pizza attempt was scrumptious but could still use a little tweaking in the recipe. Maybe just finding the hard white wheat, which has a little higher protein will help. I'll put the recipe that I concocted below and would love to hear any hints and suggestions:

Whole Wheat Pizza Dough

First grind enough white wheat berries into flour for the recipe's required amount.

Add ingredients to your bread machine as they recommend or adapt to non-machine method.

1 1/2 c warm water

1 1/2 T olive oil

3 3/4 c white whole wheat flour

1 T honey

1 1/2 t salt

1 t Lecithin (optional)

2 t Instant Yeast

In the Zojirushi, I used the quick dough setting. This did not seem to be quite enough rising time so we set the pan on the top of our gas stove which is warm to touch due to the pilots. We allowed it about 15 minutes additional raising time, for a total of 1 hour of dough preparation.

Divide the dough in two and roll out onto a pizza stone. This rolls out quite thin. Let raise in warm place for another 15 minutes.

While the dough is resting, make pizza sauce. Since I was using seasoned taco meat from this recipe, I did not add a lot to season. I use one small can about 6 oz of tomato sauce and this time added dried minced onion and garlic powder. Usually I use fresh onion and garlic, but since I had them in the meat, I did not. Heat the sauce to a boil and turn off. This will not look like a lot of sauce. Too much sauce makes all your toppings slide around.

Spread the seasoned tomato sauce evenly over both crusts. Distribute the taco meat as desired and add any other toppings you like. We only used sliced tomatoes as this was for the children who don't like lots of "things" on their pizza (nor does their mother).

Generally I grate and use Mozzarella cheese, but was out, so since this was a "Mexican pizza" I used Monterrey Jack. I find that cheddar is too greasy. But you can use cheese to your liking.

Bake for about 20 minutes at 400*F

It doesn't look too exciting, but boy! It sure tasted good.

More On Bread

This is starting out with the hard red wheat berries (in jar at right). The downfall to using the Vita-Mix for making flour is that you can only do 2 cups of grain at a time. On the other hand it's extremely fast so not really that inconvenient.

This picture was taken after counting to five, so you can see it happens fast.

This picture was taken after 35 seconds - Voila! Fresh ground flour!

Today I ground spelt berries to make flour. Spelt is a relative to wheat, but I find it makes a little lighter flour and has a natural sweetness to it. It seems to cut the slight bitterness that can sometimes occur with Whole Wheat. Yesterday I made a batch of my beet bread using some spelt flour I had. It wasn't really rancid, but wasn't fresh either. Then I realized that I had bought it at the farm where it was grown in Eastern Washington. I was last there in August 2006! So, this was 18 months old. That's old especially in our hot climate. I did have some spelt berries of unknown age, but younger than the flour! So today I ground fresh flour from them and that was the key! It truly is amazing, even when your flour is fresh from the store, the difference in taste between fresh ground and purchased flour.

This is the wheat flour along with the sprouted, ground flax I found at Costco. I'm hoping this is okay to use. I was going to fresh grind flax seed as well. (Initially this recipe called for whole flax seed) But, the reading I have been doing lately suggested that sprouted grains are healthier, so I thought we would try this. I don't know for sure whether it is any better or not!

This is the beet/water/oil/honey combo in the Vita-Mix. Isn't it pretty? I don't like beets, so the smell is pretty horrid to me.

This is halfway through the mixing. The first ingredients are put together, yeast is added and allowed to rest. Different brands of canned beats seem to differ in color. This one is average. Another brand I used (but can't remember) produced beautiful raspberry dough. I let it rest for 20 minutes at this point in time, then come back and add the rest of the ingredients and the salt. This is supposed to enhance the yeast performance.

After the dough is needed in my Kitchen Aid Pro5 mixer, I put it in this large stainless steel bowl and set it on my stovetop. We have a gas stove and the heat from the pilot is vented to the top as well as through the vents. It is warm enough to aid in the proofing process but not too warm to kill the yeast.

While the dough is proofing you can read a book, sing a song, do a dance or visit with your damsel (A has a pink damsel's hat on but her head is tipped so you don't see it) who is playing with Mater!

After proofing, shape into loaves and allow to double in size again. This part, I'm still quite amatuer at as you can see from the shapes of my loaves. I have not figured out yet what size and how many to do and I think I have been proofing them too long because they collapse a little on top. At first I thought it was too much moisture, but that was not the problem with the dough today and after reading I found too much proofing can do this. I think I might need to just go back to doing 3 loaves and not using the small one, but am not sure. I did eliminate my large pampered chef pans. :o( I have three glass pans - all three are different sizes!

Here they are, ready to bake. Just behind the brown pan (part of a baking set I bought in Germany in 1984 and it makes a "cutie little loaf" as my Grandma would say) is an oven thermometer. My oven seems to be running 25 degrees lower than what the knob reads. I still did not adjust the temp. 375* on my oven is really 350* and if you adjust 25* for glass, that would be right anyway. I take the smallest loaf out at 30-35 minutes and leave the rest in 5-10 minutes more. That works for these sizes. I used the full 50 minutes when using big loaves.

Here are all 3 loaves, a little lumpy but very yummy. My daughter J would not eat the bread when I made it with white flour, but will with the spelt added. I think it has to be the sweetness of the spelt covering the slight bitterness of whole grain. This recipe, when fine tuned might be the keeper. It's a miracle that all 3 of my kids AND Hubby like this bread!!!

Here is a closer picture showing the nice texture. My adjusted recipe is as follows:

Beet Wheat Spelt Bread

Set Aside: 1/2 cup warm water

1 t honey

2 T Instant Yeast

Blend: 1 - 15oz can beets

1/3 c honey

1/3 c light olive oil

2 1/2 c warm water

Mix: 5 1/2 c whole wheat flour

1/2 c ground sprouted flax or flax meal

2 t Lecithin granules

Yeast Mixture

Beet Mixture

Mix only until combined and let set 20 minutes.

Add: 3 1/2 c spelt flour

1 1/2 c whole wheat flour

1 T salt

Knead in mixer for 4-5 minutes. If dough seems too sticky, add more whole wheat flour a little at a time. I added an additional 1/3 cup whole wheat flour. Placed in oiled bowl and cover with a towel. Let rise in a warm place until doubled.

Divid dough into 3-4 loaf pans, depending on your size. Let them raise until double again.

Bake at 375* or 350* for glass, 30-50 minutes depending on loaf size. Remove from oven and release from pan. Brush olive oil on crust to keep tender.

Serve and Enjoy!

(Feel free to enjoy my recipe but please be kind and give credit where credit is due. This is shared to enjoy, not to be sold or copied without permission. Thank you!)