I've figured out the art of baking with whole wheat, for the most part...

... and it only took 50 pounds of flour!  LOL!  Just kidding, sort of!  For a while now, I've been baking with whole white wheat in muffins and cookies with great success, but until last week I had little to no success making whole wheat yeast breads.  After learning about the "sticky dough" concept while baking the 100% whole grain wheat bread last week, I decided to apply it to the other yeast breads I had been trying to bake. 

Monday I used the garlic twist recipe to make breadsticks.  Instead of using 2 1/4 cups of flour and extra for flouring the counter while kneading, I used 2 cups and kneaded the dough mostly in my stand mixer.  I added just enough flour to keep it from sticking while I rolled out the breadsticks.  They came out light and fluffly.  I buttered them right when they came out of the oven and sprinkled them with garlic powder.  Now that I know these are really good, I'll mix garlic powder, chives, parsely and dill into the dough for a more flavorful breadstick.  Keep your eyes out for that recipe.  We're having spaghetti next week and these breadsticks would be a perfect accompaniment.

Last week (or maybe the week before) I had made 40 minute wheat buns.  These turned out really well, but I was curious how they would do as dinner rolls.  So today, I made that recipe and instead of flattening the dough balls on a cookie sheet to make buns, I rolled them and put them in my stoneware muffin pan.  They rose beautifully, browned nicely, were soft with not too many crumbs and tasted awesome!\

Of course, I still have my moments.  I made chocolate chip mini muffins this morning and I put both mini muffin pans in the oven side by side to bake.  10 mintues later the burning smell emerges from the kitchen.  Yep-burned all 6 muffins on each edge.  They were supposed to bake 9-11 minutes-10 was obviously too much and the reason that I don't put both muffin pans in at once is because it blocks the air flow-burning the edges.  Yeah.  It was painful to dig out the six on each side and run them down the garbage disposal.  Fortunately the 36 muffins in the middle came out unscathed and were promptly devoured before pictures could be taken.  I'll have to get pics of those.  They are yummy!

My last hurdle is French Bread.  I made it a while back and wasn't super crazy about the end result.  It made good French Toast, but occasionally I want to do something different with my French Bread-like eat it as bread!  LOL!  My goal is to get a loaf of this made by the weekend! 

So there are my bread escapades for this week!  I hope to make a hamburger cabbage casserole to share.  I've got half a head of cabbage that needs to be eaten, soon!  And, I can work on using the last of those canned tomato sauces I have in my basement.  As my 3 year old would say, "Yep!  That's a plan!"