THE HONEY TRIP

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This date bread may be eaten hot or cold, and it keeps well when given a chance. We especially like it sliced and spread with a mixture of cream cheese and honey.

BREAD

My first successful whole wheat bread was also the first batch I made with honey. Here's how:

For two rather small loaves, take two cups of warm water (110115°F) and add two tablespoons of honey and a little active dry yeast or use cooler water and compressed yeast. After the leavening begins to "work", add a pinch or two of salt if desired and one tablespoon of oil (I'm partial to sesame seed oil) if you want to. Then add whole wheat flour to make a dough which is just barely stiff enough to handle, turn it out onto a well-floured board or what have you and knead in more flour (just enough so the stuff doesn't stick anymore). Knead the mass for about ten minutes, or until its texture feels right or until you're just plain sick of kneading.

Divide the dough in half, make two balls and place them on a greased cookie sheet or whatever flat pan you can find. Do not use a loaf pan, or you might never get the bread out. Grease the loaves well I also grease my hands before I shape the rounds.

Put the bread into a cold oven and turn the heat on low (about 200°) for 20 minutes or so. At the end of this time pull the loaves out and cut slashes in their tops. Replace the flat sheet or pan in the oven, turn the heat up to about 300° and bake the loaves for about an hour.

This is a fairly heavy bread, close grained and hearty. We like it hot out of the oven with butter or honey or jam or cold for sandwiches or toasted. One of the great things about the recipe is the way you can abuse it and still get fine results. I seldom measure anything these days, and often add soybean flour, dry milk powder, nutritional yeast, wheat germ, sunflower or sesame seeds, nuts, dry fruits, etc. More honey makes a sweeter loaf that is especially good toasted. I often eliminate the oil altogether except for what's needed to grease the dough and the pan. The last batch I made got left in the oven at 200° for over an hour before anyone turned up the heat. It was delicious.

Our favorite spread for our favorite bread is made by mixing equal parts of any real peanut butter (prepared from just peanuts) and light honey. Peanut butter and honey and jelly sandwiches are very popular with us, too.

MUFFIN

I've always been told that raised goods baked with honey and whole grains are heavy. Not at all! For proof, here's the recipe for our favorite muffin yes, 1 know I said "muffin", but we don't have muffin tins right now we're trucking around the country in a van and there just isn't room which I bake in a well-greased 10 inch iron skillet. I've developed this dish since we started living on the road and don't know just how it would turn out in conventional pans.

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