Is there anything better than freshly baked bread? Few things. Okay, well maybe there are lots of things. But freshly baked bread is definitely up there on the list.

I bought a whole pound of yeast at the store (it was a good price) so there is a high chance you will see more breads/other yeast recipes coming soon! This first one was a goody. This is a copycat version of the Cheesecake Factory Brown Bread, recipe from Jen Around the World blog (link here). My aunt had made this recipe and suggested I make it too.

Like I said back in my Challah post (link here), I haven’t made much bread in my life. I was very excited to make this bread today. I like that it was about half whole wheat flour and that there is a good amount of honey and molasses, so I knew the bread would have a deep sweet flavour.

The dough was very easy to bring together. I did all the mixing and kneading by hand so that was a nice little arm workout. It was quite soft and looked really good after the kneading. The molasses and cocoa powder contributed to its brown colour. It had to rise for 2 hours, but I let mine go a little longer since my house was on the chilly side. And then once the loaves were formed, they had to rise again for about 30 minutes.

After rising, comes baking! This is the exciting time because the bread makes the kitchen smell incredible. It bakes for only 30 minutes but it does have to cool before digging in.

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This bread was so soft and fluffy. It was delicious to have a piece of bread with a little butter. It’s a simple preparation but so good. The flavour of the honey and molasses really comes through. Some people might find the taste of molasses too strong but I love it. One loaf was eaten with dinner and the other went in the freezer for another day. Awesome recipe!