The Cheesecake Factory's Honey Wheat Brown Bread
Hunger Thirst Play
Notes
The original recipe uses a standing mixer, but this recipe is totally doable without one — you'll just have to knead the bread by hand. While I was mixing the dry ingredients into the yeast mixture to form the dough, I added about 3 additional tablespoons of water as the dough got firmer and tougher to knead. Adding this extra water did not affect the turnout, it just made it easier to mix and knead the dough.
If you don't have molasses on hand, you can simply use all honey. Molasses does help by adding that brown, rich color to the bread, however.
Ingredients
- 1 cup warm water (105°F)
2 tablespoons molasses
2 1/4 teaspoons dry active yeast (1 packet)
4 tablespoons honey
2 cups bread flour
1 2/3 cup whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons espresso powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1/4 cup rolled oats (optional)
Directions
- Combine warm water and molasses into mixing bowl. Sprinkle your yeast packet on top and let it sit for about 5 minutes. The yeast should be foamy on top of the mixture; once it is, add the honey.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine bread flour, whole wheat flour, cocoa powder, salt, espresso, and granulated sugar. Whisk dry ingredients until evenly combined.
- Gradually add dry ingredients to yeast mixture. If you have a standing mixer with a dough hook, then you can keep slowly adding the dry mix to the yeast mixture until everything is combined. If you don't have a standing mixer, you can knead the dough with your hands.
- Once dry ingredients and the yeast mixture are fully combined, add the butter and mix (or knead) until a soft and smooth dough forms.
- Lightly grease a large bowl with cooking oil spray. Put your dough into the bowl and cover with plastic wrap or a towel. Place the bowl in a warm area to allow your dough to rise for about 1 hour, or until it doubles in size.
- Sprinkle some flour onto a clean surface and put your risen dough onto it. Shape your dough into two large loaves (you can do smaller loaves like I did, as long as they're even in size).
- Place your loaves onto a greased baking sheet (or one with parchment paper) and sprinkle the oats onto the top of the loaves.
- Allow your loaves to sit for another hour, until they've doubled in size again. Once they're nearly done rising, set the oven to 350°F.
- Bake your bread for about 20-25 minutes. If you're doing bigger loaves, you may want to let them go for about 5 minutes more.
- Once your bread is done cooking, transfer the loaves to a wire rack and allow them to cool.
Information
- Yield
- 2 large loaves
- Total Time
- 2 hours, 59 minutes, 59 seconds