Granary bread with pumpkin seeds
Yes I have a confession! Once or twice a week I always make our own bread, it is the same recipe each time – ‘him indoors’, bless, is a Taurean so likes routine and like him I adore this bread toasted in the morning, apart from occasionally stealing a hot crust soon after it comes out of the oven!
I say ‘I have a confession’ as some people are amazed I make my own bread, actually it is not at all difficult, especially with a stand mixer, such as the KitchenAid, which makes life easy and the AGA loaf tin is great for cooking the bread. Although sometimes I do use my hands for a therapeutic experience - kneading bread benefits by working-out one’s pent up frustrations!! The warmth of the AGA is ideal for proving the dough and cooking in the radiant heat of a cast iron oven is excellent, just like the baker’s brick oven.
This recipe uses a malted wheat grain flour, brown flour with malted wheat grains. Granary has become a generic name for this type of flour but it is in fact a registered trade name of Rank Hovis. Added to this are pumpkin seeds which give a distinctive nutty flavour as well as health giving benefits. Pumpkin seeds contain zinc, phosphorus, magnesium, copper and other trace elements, omega 3, omega 6, (which benefit the heart and liver) plus protein.
The finished loaf can be frozen or freeze some in slices to eat fresh another day. The separate slices can be toasted from frozen, using the AGA Toaster on the Boiling Plate.
The AGA is also useful for minimising the washing up, you will see in the recipe short cuts for melting butter to grease the tin and melting butter for the main recipe – some fat or oil helps the keeping quality of the loaf.
Granary bread with pumpkin seeds recipe>>
by Dawn Roads, AGA specialist.
