Carrot Raisin Bread

If you are one of those who like carrot cake, but want to stay away from it for health reasons, this is a good alternative. It has carrots, raisins and you could easily add walnuts and other spices than what is mentioned in the recipe. It neither has eggs nor a lot of fat, sugar in it. I made it part whole wheat and part white, but I feel it can easily be made into a complete whole wheat flour bread. If you are a vegan, all you have to do is use soy yogurt in place of dairy yogurt and replace honey with maple syrup.

Ingredients:
Whole Wheat flour - 2 cups
Bread flour - 2 cups
Honey - 1/4 cup or 4 TBSP
Oil - 3 TBSP
Salt - 1 1/2 tsp
Yeast - 2 1/4 tsp
Warm water - 1 cup
Yogurt or sour cream - 1/4 cup
Carrots - grated and measured 1 cup
Raisins - 1 cup
Cinnamon - 1 tsp

Method:
I used a bread machine on dough setting to make the dough. You can actually bake it in the bread machine on fruit and nut setting.
Place water, yogurt or sourcream, oil, honey, salt, cinnamon, flours, yeast in the pan of the bread machine and start on dough setting. Add grated carrots. When the machine beeps to add the nuts, add raisins. This dough is a little sticky. Don't be tempted to add more flour to fix it. When the cycle completes, take out the dough. Grease a 9 X 5 pan with vegetable oil spray. Shape the loaf on a lightly greased surface. Grease your hands if necessary. Cover with an oiled aluminum foil and let it rise for about 30 - 45 minutes. (I let it rise too much and it became a huge loaf) Preheat the oven to 375 F towards the end of rise time. Bake for 20 minutes and then cover with aluminum foil loosely and bake for another 15 minutes or till done. Let cool on the wire rack. When completely cool, slice and serve with butter or jam. Tastes great toasted with a cup of coffee or tea too.

To make it by hand use the method mentioned in this post. Use the baking temperature given above after shaping the loaf.

You can divide this between two 8 X 4 loaf pans to get not too huge loafs. You will have to reduce the baking time by about 5 - 10 minutes in that case.

Notes:
You can brush with little bit of milk before baking and brush with some butter after baking for a nice crust.

Happy Baking!!