The bread recipe and surgery

In response to your requests (thanks for asking!) here's the bread recipe. It comes straight from the my sister Trish. I do not know where she got it from. For those of us who miss her blogging, I'm just going to put in the whole recipe in Trish's own words. She will be my unofficial guest blogger for the day.

I need a guest blogger today because in a couple of hours I have to go back to Dr. Jolly's for some oral surgery (that's his first name. I spent half the morning think about naming a child Jolly. It's unusual, sure, but how can you go wrong when your name is Jolly? You're probably feeling very Jolly all the time, right?) . Here's a quick story:

15 years ago I had my wisdom teeth out. Except they only pulled three of them. The fourth one stayed inside where it grew into my face bone and nerve (I just found that lovely news out this morning). It is causing some havoc in my mouth. The offending tooth has got to be removed.

Actually, I learned about the problem a year ago. A whole year! I have been scared for a year to have this surgery done. But January rolled around and I was out of excuses like,
"I can't have surgery while I'm nursing the baby"
"I can't have surgery until the baby can walk"
"I can't have surgery until the holidays are over"
"I can't have surgery during seminary time"

The no-longer nursing, mama of a walking baby, post holiday, seminary-hiatus-this-week-only lady (that's me) has now run out of excuses. Dr. Jolly (all 5 feet 2 inches of him) is waiting for me for our appointment. At which time he will knock me out and remove the offensive tooth. I will then spend the next several days recuperating. It's going to be soooooo awesome.

Eat your bread and say a prayer for me, okay?

Bye.

Whole Wheat Bread:
2 1/2 cups warm water
4 tsp. yeast
3 tsp. salt
1/3 cup honey
1 stick (8 T.) butter (softened)
6 cups whole wheat flour (or mix of flours--whatever you’ve got)
¼ cup ground flax
¼ cup oat bran
1 1/2 T. dough enhancer

Here are the rest of the directions:

First, put warm water in mixer and add yeast. Then place all remaining ingredients in mixer. Pulse 12 times (just turn the mixer on and off 12 times).

Mix for 10-15 minutes.

Leave dough in mixing bowl, cover with a towel and let it double in size: 45 minutes +/-

Remove from bowl, cut in equal halves, and place in 2 sprayed loaf pans.

Let rise until doubled in size again, about 15 minutes or so (cover with towel). (This second rise is important.)

Bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

(So Liz, this is my exact recipe. You need everything except the flax and oat bran--I add those for extra goodness (plus I have them on hand). If you have something else--the original recipe called for potato flakes--(Hey guys, this is me, Liz, interrupting Trish's words. I use the potato flakes. It makes the bread so moist and joyous) you can add it to the mix. It doesn’t really matter what it is. Sometimes I add cracked wheat cereal or rolled oats even just an extra ½ cup of flour. You may need some more flour on top of that, depending on how your bread looks. I don’t know how much experience you have with bread making, but basically the rule of thumb is that once it pulls away from the edge of the bowl on its own, it has enough flour. This is a pretty forgiving recipe.)