Blueberry Streusel Bread: The whole wheat version!

It's blueberry season! Last July I posted a recipe for Blueberry Streusel Bread. It's super-yummy, but not the healthiest bread in the world (to put it mildly.)

This week I got a good deal on blueberries at Costco, so I decided to make the bread again. But I wanted to make it a bit healthier. Instead of using regular challah dough (with all white flour) I used the dough recipe for Braided Challah With Whole Wheat and Wheat Germ from pages 258-261 of Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day.

I'm not going to claim the bread is now healthy. It still has a lot of fat and sugar, and I'm a little scared to know what the calorie count is. But now 5/8 of the flour is whole wheat, which adds healthy fiber. (I used White Whole Wheat which is just as healthy as regular whole wheat, but has a lighter color and flavor.) And it's got a bit of wheat germ in it, which gives you folic acid, vitamin E, and more fiber. I also made this challah dough with canola oil instead of butter (though the streusel topping still has a lot of butter in it!) In other words, it's still a treat, but it's a treat with more nutritional value than the original had!

As for taste...it was delicious. The original is so sweet and I liked that the sweetness was tempered with the hearty taste of whole wheat flour. I'd feel confident serving this even to people who don't normally eat a lot of whole grains. (If you have a Fourth of July party to attend, you might be the host's favorite guest if you bring this!)

Luckily, the recipe for the dough is on the Artisan Bread in Five/Healthy Bread in Five blog. So I can share this recipe with you even if you don't have the book! (But if you don't have it...it's a great one for your cookbook library!)

First I'll tempt you with a photo of the finished product....



Now I'll give you the modified recipe, and below that I'll include the photos I took for the original blog post. Just know that your dough will look darker than the dough in the photos, thanks to the whole wheat flour.

Blueberry Streusel Bread with Whole Wheat and Wheat Germ

Ingredients:

1 to 1 1/4 pounds Challah With Whole Wheat and Wheat Germ dough (See #1 in Instructions below.)

Blueberries (to taste, about 1 to 1 1/2 cup)

Streusel topping

Streusel topping ingredients:

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 cup butter

3/4 cup old fashioned oats

Instructions:

1. Make dough in advance--it should be refrigerated for at least a few hours prior to using. The recipe can be found in pages 258-261 of Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Or you can use the recipe for Whole Grain Challah With Cranberries and Orange Zest from the Artisan Bread in Five blog--just don't use any cranberries or orange zest. The dough recipe makes a LOT. If you make the whole dough recipe, you'll need about 1/4 of the dough for this bread. The rest can be stored in the fridge for up to five days and used for delicious braided challah bread, using the instructions from the book or the blog. Or you can just divide all the measurements by 4 and only make as much as you need.

2. Lightly grease a full-sized loaf pan.

3. Make the streusel topping. Mix flour, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Use pastry blender or food processor's "Pulse" mode to cut in butter until crumbly.

4. Stir oats into streusel topping.

3. Sprinkle dough surface with flour. Break off a 1 to 1 1/2 pound piece of dough (grapefruit-sized or a bit larger.) Cover with flour, then quickly form into a ball. Place on flour-sprinkled surface.

5. Use hands and rolling pin to stretch/roll dough into a rough rectangle. You may need to roll it out partially, then let it rest for a few minutes, if it's "bouncing back" too much as you roll. Short side should be about as long as the loaf pan; long side should be about 12-16 inches.

6. Liberally sprinkle dough with blueberries.

7. Liberally sprinkle blueberries with streusel topping.

8. Carefully roll dough, starting with short side. When done, gently pinch edge to the body of the roll to seal it.

9. Place roll in loaf pan, seam side down.

10. Let loaf rest for 1 hour 20 minutes. Near the end of this time, preheat oven to 350 degrees.

11. Liberally sprinkle loaf with streusel topping, gently pressing the streusel into the top of the loaf. If some topping falls in between the loaf and the pan, even better!

12. If your bread is near the top of the loaf pan, place pan on a cookie sheet to catch any streusel that falls off when the bread rises in the oven. Bake about 55 minutes; it should be nicely browned. Let cool a bit on a rack.

13. Cut...and enjoy!

Photos:

Making the streusel:


Streusel before oatmeal has been added:


Streusel with oatmeal added:


The ball of dough:


Rolled-out dough:


Dough + blueberries = Yum. (But do try to avoid including any blueberry stems unless you want to add even more fiber. Can you spot the one I missed?)


Dough + blueberries + streusel = Double yum.


Big ol' roll of yumminess:


In the pan!


Sprinkled with streusel and ready to bake:


Cooling: