I get particularly irked when a recipe says "a cup of zucchini, or a cup of blueberries or 2 medium bananas." While Clayton's cookbook came out before kitchen scales became widespread in home kitchens, modern recipe writers really should know better.

I'm going to go with 1 cup of water, given all the whole grains and my plan to substitute 2 cups of buttermilk at the start.

The original recipe is baked in three 1 lb. coffee cans, but Clayton casually mentions that there will be leftover dough to put in another loaf pan or brioche dishes. This will be an experiment.

I guess that I haven't seen a one pound coffee can in years. I remember they went down to 13 oz. I buy coffee beans and grind them these days.

I am hoping that three 8x4 inch loaf pans will do the trick.

I have mixed up the dough, and it is rising in a rising bucket where I can keep an eye on its progress.

I decided to substitute 1 cup barley flakes for the barley flour. I know that can work with oats; we shall see how the barley flakes perform. I soaked the oats, barley flakes and millet in 2 cups buttermilk for a bit before I proofed the yeast with 1 Tbs. of honey in 1 cup water. I used 1/2 cup potato flour. It is a very heavy dough. It seemed a bit dry, so I added 1 Tbs. of water. Initially, I had to keep stopping the mixer and move it around. I kneaded it for 8 minutes in my 7-quart Cuisinart stand mixer. I suspect that this dough cannot be over kneaded.

I'll report back when I shape and pan them for the second rise.

I ended up using 6 tsp. of yeast, and perhaps it should have been 4 1/2 or 5 tsp. The very fast rise worried me, so I decided that I would give it a second rise before shaping and the third rise. In the past, I've had breads that had a fast first rise collapse. That may not have been a good decision, but it was what I did. They were rather small in the pan, so I might have been able to use just two 8x4 pans. I ended up with three rather low loaves--certainly not sandwich bread size--which will likely be rather dense. I'll add a post tomorrow about taste and texture.

Unfortunately, I'm on a low-saturated fat diet, and 1 Tbs. of regular cream cheese has 6 grams. I do, however, have plenty of homemade jam, in three flavors, that I made earlier this summer.

The taste will determine if I decide to give it another try. Figuring out how much yeast to use, keeping the dough to two rises (I could kick myself for not just shaping and panning it in spite of the quick first rise), and possibly using different pans might make a difference. Each pan had 663g of dough, and my 8x4 pans usually have unbaked dough of about 860g.I have some 7x3 pans, and they might have worked better.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 2 months ago by BakerAunt.

I found a blog that features this bread:

And, yes, that is exactly what my loaves look like.

I have a feeling this recipe is not worth a repeat.

I'm wondering if slicing a loaf thinly, brushing with butter, and toasting would produce an interesting "hard bread" cracker. I may try that.

If all else fails, we have a "bread hound," who mooches bread off of my husband who is trying to get her to love him....