Yummmm. 
This is another very easy bread recipe that I came across in the latest issue of Cooking Light, and I thought I'd give it a shot. It came out very well, even though it got messed up a little bit. Let me explain. I started out following the recipe, but had to veer off a bit when it came to the rising and baking of the bread. Cooking Light states to place all three loaves of bread on a single baking sheet to rise. After thirty minutes, my bread loaves had all risen to the point that they were completely smooshed against the sides of the pan and each other. So I had to gingerly try to move the loaves onto their own baking sheets, which caused them to deflate a bit. Then, in the baking process, I had dinner in the oven at 375 degrees, so I just put the first loaf in at that temperature, for about 23-24 minutes, rather than at 350 degrees for 30 minutes as the recipe calls for. And in the end, the bread still came out as a very softly crusted, but very tasty bread. Also, Cooking Light claims this is a "no-knead" bread, but I'd have to disagree. The recipe does say to beat the bread in an electric mixer until it forms a ball – this took 3-4 minutes in my kitchenaid. That is pretty much like kneading it by hand for 6-8 minutes! It was still easier than a full fledged kneaded bread, but not quite as easy as Bittman's bread!
For a couple of years now I have been using unbleached, unbromated flour - both all-purpose and bread flours. Many recipes recommended it, and in my baking classes, that is what we used. It just sounded better to use something that didn't have anything in common with laundering socks and underwear. Well, I ran across another reason while reading a new book, Zingerman's Guide to Good Eating by Ari Weinzweig. Apparently, bromate is added to some flours in order to save time between the milling process of the flour and when it can be shipped out. Bromate speeds up the maturation process of the flour, so it can be shipped out of the factory with a day of milling, rather than the typical two or three weeks. So by adding bromate, producers save both time and money. But at what cost? Apparently, bromate has been found to be a potentially cancer-causing agent. And even worse, most countries in the Western World have banned bromate except the United States.
I've long had a stack on my desk where I just throw recipes that I have cut out of magazines, printed off the internet, or gotten from friends or family. It isn't much of a surprise that most of those recipes, that I thought looked or sounded great at one time, quickly got buried by the newest additions rather than make it to the kitchen in order to be tried. In the organizational process I have used over 400 clear plastic sheet protectors, 5 big binders, and several packages of page dividers. But finally, these recipes, mostly forgotten, will now have their moment. Or at least, a better chance of getting their moment!
Today's recipe comes from the January/ February issue of Cooking Light. Seriously. It is a recipe that they "made over," trying to make it lighter than the original. Well, they really just made them smaller. Pretty silly makeover, if you ask me, but a stinkin' addicting recipe. And honestly, I didn't have some of the ingredients, so I threw some other things in, and they came out peanut buttery, chewy, crunchy, and downright yummy. Here is the link for the Swag Bars recipe I started with. It called for Total cereal flakes, which I didn't have, so I used rice krispies. It called for 1 1/2 cups of peanuts, but I only had a cup, so I added in a half cup of chopped cashews. It called for (a paltry) 2 ounces of chocolate to drizzle over the top. I went up to 4 ounces, and that was just enough to add a very thin layer over the top of the bars. Definitely not excessive. Well, except when you eat four of them.
Looking for a fantastically easy, amazingly tasty bread recipe? You might have seen this one floating out and about in cyber space, but I finally caught up with it. Step 1: Mix flour, salt, yeast and water in a bowl. Step 2: Cover said bowl with plastic wrap and let it sit overnight. Step 3: Shape the dough into a ball. Step 4: Dump the dough in a hot casserole dish and bake. "Where's the step where I have to knead it until my arms fall off?" you might be asking. Ah ha! It isn't kneaded/needed! And this is probably the best crackly crust that has come out of my oven. 
I got a new cookbook for Christmas - Baking: From My Kitchen to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. It is chockfull of great recipes and mouth-watering pictures. I started going through it, marking the pages of recipes I would like to try with post-it notes. Well, after about 10 pages I gave up, as I was marking every page! I probably would have gone through a whole tablet of post-it notes by the end of this substantial book! 
So last night for a fun dinner, I decided to try three biscuit recipes out of it - Basic Biscuits (with milk), Buttermilk Biscuits, and Sweet Cream Biscuits. I cooked some bacon and scrambled some eggs, and along with some butter, Sweet Plum Butter and Strawberry Rhubarb Butter, our biscuit taste-testing supper commenced. All three were very good, 
but we all agreed that the Sweet Cream Biscuits were our favorites. One thing I loved about the recipes is how they can be frozen - now I have a dozen biscuits to take out in a snap and throw them in the oven.
