To review, Michelle over at Big Black Dog, organized a group to bake from the book by Dr. Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe François, Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day.

Part of our latest assignment was to bake a loaf of the Milk & Honey Bread. As its name suggests, this bread is enriched with milk and sweetened with honey. I chose to substitute agave nectar for the honey and added 1/4 cup of flax seed meal, as I do with most breads I bake. And, ‘cuz that’s just the way I roll, rather than the raisins in the recipe, I used an antioxidant blend of dried fruit, which is a mix of chopped dried blueberries, tart cherries and dried plums.

This dough was a pleasure to work with and formed up into a beautiful loaf. I brushed it with milk instead of egg wash before sprinkling demerara sugar and baking, resulting in a sparkly, crunchy crust.

I’ll absolutely bake the HBin5 Milk & Honey Bread again, perhaps without the fruit and sugar topping, which I think were kind of superfluous in this rich, finely-crumbed loaf. And then, I did this:

Orange French Toast

adapted from a recipe on FloridaCrystals.com

Ingredients:

2 eggs
Grated zest of 2 oranges
2 tablespoon – orange juice
2 tbsp. – Florida Crystals® Natural Cane Sugar
1/8 tsp. – salt
1/8 tsp. – ginger
6 slices of firm bread
Butter for frying
Florida Crystals® Natural Cane Sugar

Preparation:

Beat eggs, rind, juice, Florida Crystals® Natural Cane Sugar, salt and ginger together until well blended. Soak bread for 1 minute in mixture, turning once. Melt butter in skillet over medium heat.

Place bread in pan. While the first side is cooking, sprinkle about ¼ tsp. of Florida Crystals® Natural Cane Sugar on topside of bread. Turn bread when bottom is nicely browned. The second side will cook quickly due to the caramelizing of the sugar. Remove from pan.

Serve sugar side up.

Notes:

The HBin5 Milk & Honey Bread made perfect French toast with this citrus version of the classic recipe, but since the slices are so large, I only got 3 slices from it. Keep that in mind when preparing this for your family. I suggest doubling all of the ingredients except the grated orange rind when preparing the suggested six slices.

The original recipe uses only 1 Tbs. of orange juice and uses cinnamon. I increased the juice to 2 Tbs. and changed out the cinnamon for ginger (my favorite spice these days), which goes exceptionally well with the orange.

Love this version of French toast. It’s a keeper and has earned a spot in my breakfast / brunch repertoire. Try it this morning – bet you’ve already got everything you need in your fridge and pantry!

Print this post for your Moleskine journal