I’ve been pondering all day what to use for this week’s Works for Me Wednesday (Hosted by Shannon, at the Rocks in My Dryer blog) and after American Idol tonight I had a burst of inspiration.  “Bread!” I thought.   “I’ll talk about bread”.

Sounds exciting, right? The life of a stay at home housewife has many thrills.  :) 

Ever since starting my sugar free diet over 3 weeks ago (I’m a gestational diabetic), I’ve had to completely change my way of thinking about the foods I cook and what I eat.  Some of our most favorite (and easiest) dishes at our house include homemade mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, and white flour french bread made in my bread machine  Unfortunately, all of these are starches - and they turn right to sugar!

I have never cared too much for “brown bread” (whole wheat / whole grain) even though I knew it was healthiest for me even without this gestational diabetes thing.  My mom uses the whole grain bread (without high fructose corn syrup) at her house, and I’ve been eating that a little but otherwise bread has been pretty much non-existant in our house for nearly a month now and my poor bread machine has been crying in loneliness locked up in my flour cabinet.  I felt sorry for the poor machine, which has previously given us tremendously yummy french bread - but what could I do?  I like easy recipes that can be completely done in the bread machine (the kind with just a few ingredients) and the only ones I knew were with white flour.  I gave a half hearted attempt a few times to find whole wheat bread, but most recipes call for at least a cup or more of white flour mixed in.  I also read how whole wheat recipes usually come out very hard, thick, and too dense for newbie bread makers to try. 

Finally, last night, I discovered what seemed to be an easy recipe on my favorite recipe site - RecipeZaar.com.  (Here’s the link to the original post on the site!  Try it out and give the cook a review!).

The recipe is for 100% whole wheat bread, made in the bread machine.  Here are the ingredients -

1 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
3 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 tablespoons white sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons nonfat dry milk powder
1 1/2 tablespoons margarine
1 1/4 cups water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)

It uses ingredients most of us already have (I used Country Crock butter in the tub instead of margarine), doesn’t call for much sugar (I only used 1 tablespoon…you can probably substitute for something else as all it is for is food for the yeast I believe), and was very “set it and forget it”.  Best of all?  No preservatives, I know exactly what’s in it, and there’s no high fructose corn syrup.

So, at 9:00 pm last night, I excitedly dragged my trusty $2.00 electric bread machine down (Goodwill second hand shop is great…my bread machine retails for $100 brand new).  Then I opened the first pack of whole wheat flour I’ve ever purchased and started dumping my ingredients into my bread machine pan.  The instructions say you can set it on “Whole Wheat” (if your machine has that setting) or “Basic Bread”.   I set mine on Whole Wheat and chose a light crust (I always choose light crust).   Then I turned it on and crossed my fingers.

The whole wheat setting on my bread machine takes 3 hours and 20 minutes - which means my bread wasn’t finished until 12:20 am.  I could have put it on a delayed cycle but I was so excited that I didn’t want to wait to try it out.  And honestly, I didn’t think it would do well - so I had low expectations anyway and figured I could just dump it out before my hubby awoke and found out I’d bombed a new recipe (I like for him to stay under the spell that I’m a natural whiz in the kitchen).

By midnight, the aroma of this bread made my whole house smell like a bakery.  It was honestly the best smelling bread I had ever..well…smelled!  And I was famished.

I hoped and prayed to God (literally) that my pregnant belly wouldn’t be dissapointed.  The faint trickling thought that “Hey, I hate whole wheat bread” crossed my mind a few times, but I quickly dismissed it in hopes that it would taste as good as it smelled.

Ok - so 12:20 hits and my dinger goes off to let me know the bread is done.  Using my trusty little blue flowered oven mitt, I pulled the pan handle up and lifted the bread pan out of the machine.  I tried to dump the loaf out on a plate, but it was  a wee bit stuck so I had to trace around the edges of the bread with a butter knife to loosen it from the pan and POP…out it came.  And out came my trusty bread knife ($8.95 from Walmart..yay!).

The first bite was absolutely heavenly.  The loaf sliced easily, didn’t crumble and wasn’t too dense.  I cut 3 thick slices (I love my homemade bread slices to be realllllyyyy thick) and couldn’t resist putting a small dab of honey on the first slice (although my 2nd & 3rd stayed au natural).   Paired with a glass of ice water, I must confess that this was absolutely the best wheat bread I’d ever tasted in my life.  It was a gazillion times better than loaf wheat bread from the grocery store.

After finishing off my 3 slices I went to bed a happy camper.  Then for lunch today, I ate 3 more slices (it’s addicting) and gave my mom and dad each a slice to test when they came over to visit. 

For dinner tonight, I cooked turkey, homemade mashed potatoes (for my hubby, Kevin…I, sadly, can’t eat them), and peas.  I cut 2 thick slices of the bread for Kevin - and quartered them, then slathered on cream cheese.  He used them as little bisquit cakes (and complained when he learned there was none left!).  For myself, since I couldn’t eat the potatoes, I made a turkey sandwhich with some lettuce and a bit of mustard spread on 2 sandwhich style slices of the bread.  It made a fabulous sandwhich - held together well, was very filling, looked pretty, and tasted better than any deli sandwhich I’ve had.  Needless to say, I am very very pleased with my newest discovery!

I would have taken pictures of the bread, but, well, I’ve already eaten it all - and didn’t think of using it for this week’s WFMW until American Idol went off and I realized it was time to think of a good WFMW topic.

For more great tips on tried and true things that really work for other ladies, head over to this week’s Works for Me Wednesday list.