Receta Honey and date bread – breakfast loaf
“To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.” – Buddha
One of my new year resolution was that I will be more disciplined in my life, not that I am seeking nirvana but to have more control on my life but as the days passed, my procrastinate mind keep shuffling the things, priorities takes a back seat and everything goes awry and without any rhymes or reasons things doesn’t fall in places as they should be. As the month of January slowly draws to an end I realised how many things I planned for the month but couldn’t accomplish, some due to my laid back attitude and some for the lack of discipline in my life.
This is more apparent when a self-imposed strict regimen of morning walk becomes intermittent , as the weather fluctuates so my regimen too ! To keep myself more focussed and to hone further my baking skills, I also thought of baking a bread every week, but it did not materialise, for some reason or other. On top of the things I become a self-confessed computer game addicts, I can play for hours …unending !
So when life slowly slips through your hand, like grains of sand, it is best to focus on something that you love to do, for me it is reading a book, fiction or non fiction whichever depends on my mood and this in turn hopes to bring the focus back on my life. This is what my understanding or my philosophy and so in the past week I decided to switch off my TV, got disconnected from FB (sometimes these are seriously distracting) and devoted myself completely to the books that I loves to read, it rekindles my passion for reading and at the end of day it makes me lot happier and contented.
Apart from leading a more disciplined life, I also thought of kicking out the HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) products from my pantry, and that means I have to cook or bake things that I previously used to buy from my regular grocer. Attributing HFSC alone to the cause of obesity or high blood sugar may sound erroneous to many but after having consumed such products on a day-to-day basis, few months later its impact on the health is much more pronounced and visible. And it may also give rise to other health complications too. So from this year I literally impose a ban on such HFCS product at my home and to start with I stop buying commercial bread which are laced with HFSC.
At home we are highly dependent on bread and sandwiches for our breakfast, even the Indian style breakfast food simply become non-existent for us, partially due to the ease of cooking (toasting bread is lot simpler !) in rush hour morning time and it is more adaptive and convenient too. So in the light of present self realisation we are trying to bring back those healthy Indian style breakfast in our diet whenever possible and the days which are just marked for bread, I started baking my own breakfast loaf .
To begin with I have baked this date and honey loaf, it is simple, nothing complicated flavours, just spread some butter or cream cheese over it and you will fall in love with this. Honey keeps the bread moist and who doesn’t loves dates in a bread ! With few sprinkles of toasted sesame on top of it, can give a tough competition to your local baker even ! Dont believe me, just bake this moist and delicious loaf and we can then discuss things over a slice of this bread!
Recipe: Honey and date bread
Summary: Simple honey and date moist bread topped with toasted sesame for the breakfast.
Ingredients
- Bread flour (strong) : 2 cups
- Salt : 1/2 tsp
- Active dry yeast : 1 packet
- Lukewarm water : 3/4 cup
- Oil (sunflower) : 3 tbsp
- Honey : 3tbsp
- Dates (chopped and pitted) : 1 1/2 cup
- Sesame seeds : 2 tbsp
Instructions
Grease a two pound loaf pan.
Sift the flour into a large bowl and stir in salt and yeast.
Pour in the water, oil and honey.
Mix everything together to form a dough.
Place the dough on a lightly floured surface and knead for about 5 minutes, until smooth.
Place the dough in a greased bowl, cover and let it rise in a warm place for about 1 hour or until doubled in size.
Knead in the dates and sesame seeds.
Shape the dough and place in the pan.
Cover and leave in a warm place for another 30 minutes or until springy to the touch.
Bake in a preheated oven at 425 F for 30 minutes or until a hollow sound can be heard when the base of the loaf is tapped with knuckles.
Transfer the loaf to a wire rack and let it cool.
Serve the thick cut slices with plain butter or with some cheese spread.
Diet type: Vegetarian
Number of yields 1 loaf
Culinary tradition: USA (General)
My rating 5 stars: ★★★★★ 1 review(s)
Hope you will love this recipe, until next
Sukanya