Breakfast of Champions

I love breakfast. It is an integral part of my day. I don't care how early or late I get up, breakfast is a must (my mama raised me right!). However, I'm a fairly choosy breakfast consumer. I loathe excessively sweet things unless they are off-set with some form of protein (preferably a pork product like bacon or sausage), avoid commercial breakfast cereals at all costs, and really can't stand citrus first thing in the morning.

This typically means that I have an egg, granola or oatmeal for breakfast, which can get pretty monotonous. I also love toast and peanut butter but I found that most commercial bread doesn't have enough substance to get me to 10:00 am without me wanting to eat my fist. The recipe below, which I modified from Nigella Lawson's cookbook, "Nigella Express" however, is the bee's knees, particularly when paired with some excellent crunchy peanut butter. I normally double the recipe to make 2 loaves. I put one in the fridge for immediate consumption and the other in the freezer as a back-up.

This recipe takes a while to bake, so plan on doing it over a lazy weekend at home, intermixed with lots of book reading, knitting or movie viewing.

Lazy Loaf

Ingredients:

• 2 3/4 C whole wheat bread flour
• 2 C unsugared muesli (I like Dorset Brand because it has a lot of oats, nuts and fruit)
• 2 1/2 tsp rapid-rise yeast
• 2 tsp kosher salt
• 1/2 C Skim Milk
• 1/2 C Whole Milk
• 1 C water
• additional dried fruit and nuts to your preference
  

Directions:

• Mix flour, muesli, additional nuts and berries, yeast and salt in a large bowl.
• Pour in milk and water and stir until combined (will look like thick porridge
• Place in a greased loaf pan
• Put pan in a cold oven
• Turn oven to 225 degrees and bake for 45 minutes
• Then, turn the over to 350 degrees and bake for 1 hour or until golden and cooked through
• The loaf is very dense so it should sound hollow when you slip it out of the pan and knock it underneath. If it is not cooked enough, put it back into the pan and bake for a few more minutes.
• Let cool, and enjoy!