Bread and Chocolate Mint cake

Best Bread in the World

2 cups boiling water
1 cup rolled oats, (uncooked)
pour boiling water over oats. Let stand until thoroughly softened
2/3 cups warm water
1 T. salt
1/2 cup honey
2 T. oil (or butter, melted and cooled)
add the water, salt, honey and oil or butter to oats when they are lukewarm
2-3 Cups whole wheat flour
add the whole wheat to the oat mixture and mix
1 T. SAF instant yeast
2-3 cups unbleached flour
add the SAF to the mixture. Add flour until the dough starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl. Knead for 5 min.

Put dough into lightly oiled bowl, turning it to coat dough on all sides. Cover with a cloth and let rise for 1 hour. Punch down the risen bread dough and cut in half. Knead each half briefly and shape into loaves. Brush the top of each loaf with warm honey and then roll in oats to dress up the loaf. Place in greased bread pans. Cover and let rise for 30 min. Bake for 35 min @ 350 degrees. Turn loaves onto a rack and let cool.






French Peasant Bread

1 package dry yeast
2 cups warm water
1 Tb. sugar
2 teaspoons salt
4 cups flour
oil
corn meal
melted butter

Place yeast, water, sugar and salt int warm bowl and stir until dissolved. Add flour and stir until blended. Do not knead. Cover and let rise one hour or until doubled in size. Flour hands, remove dough from the bowl and place in 2 rounds on an oiled cookie sheet sprinkled with corn meal. Let rise and additional hour. Brush the top with melted butter and bake at 425 degrees for 10 min. Reduce oven temperature to 375 degrees and cook an additional 15 min. Remove from the oven and brush again with butter. Serve warm.





Chocolate Mint Cake

Make a chocolate cake (2 layer) (I usually use two cake mixes) and cut each layer in half, to make 4 layers. Put cool whip between each layer (when totally cooled) then top with the following mint sauce and let it drip over the sides.

2/3 cup chocolate chips (semi sweet)
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter
1 tsp peppermint extract (or 1/4 of a tsp peppermint essential oil)

The sauce is good, some like to double the whole thing to make the cake even more minty!