Wow! My first Grain Challenge! I had never baked bread from scratch let alone milled my own flour. This was going to be a whole new experience for this chef as I embarked on a new process.
I found the recipe on Food Network’s Website This was the first time ever that I have attempted to make bread from scratch. I’ve always been a bit intimidated by the whole process and have usually just stuck with a store bought mix and added an ingredient or two such as jalapenos to a corn bread mix, etc. Now I’m going to have a go at it AND mill my own flour in the process. Wow… that’s a lot to take on for the first time
I purchased wheat grain from Whole Foods earlier in the day. Can I just tell you how muchI love their bulk foods section? It has everything a chef could dream of and it’s mostly organic too. Since this was my first use of my WonderMill, I followed the suggestion of running 2 cups of grain through to remove any impurities that may have been there in the manufacturing process. It also gave me an idea of how it worked before I milled flour I was going to use for a recipe. Although it is the quietest mill out there, it still made enough noise to scare two of my cats. They scampered off as if they were being chased by a Great Dane!
This recipe seemed simple enough. I found it on Food Network’s website and it had ingredients I already had in my pantry. SCORE! No extra shopping for me. I did make one modification; I used my newly milled wheat flour instead of the all-purpose flour the recipe called for. I milled 2 cups of hard white wheat grain which made this recipe rock!
Zucchini Almond Bread
butter
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 zucchinis (12 ounces)
2/3 cup sugar + 2 tablespoons
1/2 cup almonds
1/2 tsp baking soda
fine salt
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
1/4 cup honey
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp finely grated lemon zest
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter and flour a 9 by 5 by 3-inch loaf pan. Trim the ends off the zucchini and grate on the large holes of a box grater. Because I had zucchini-zilla a friend gave me from her garden, I cut off a portion and weighed it on my food scale to make sure I was just using 12 ounces before grating it. Toss the grated zucchini with 2 tablespoons sugar and place in a colander. Let stand 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, using a food processor, grind 1/4 cup of the almonds and set them aside. I had a bag of sliced raw almonds, so I used those. Roughly chop the remaining almonds and set those aside as well. Mine were pretty roughly chopped since I wanted big chunks of sliced almonds in my bread.
Next, in a medium bowl, whisk the ground almonds with 1 cup flour, baking soda, and 1/4 teaspoon fine salt. For this recipe, I used my milled wheat flour rather then all purpose store bought flour. In another bowl, whisk the remaining 2/3 cup sugar with the vegetable oil, eggs, honey, and vanilla until the sugar dissolves. Stir in the flour mixture until just combined.
Using your hands, firmly squeeze handfuls of the grated zucchini to remove excess water and add the drained zucchini to the batter along with the reserved chopped almonds and lemon zest. Stir a few times to incorporate into the batter and transfer batter to the prepared loaf pan.
Bake until golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 55 to 60 minutes. Cool in the pan, on a wire rack for 10 minutes. Turn the bread out of the pan and cool completely on the rack. Serve.
Recipe Source: Food Network
