Semi Failure

I gave it the college try, in making bread according to a recipe for the slow cooker. It was an interesting recipe and sounded fairly easy. Here’s the recipe.

1 tablespoon yeast
1/4 cup warm water
1 cup warm milk or buttermilk
1/4 cup rolled oats
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons honey
1 whole egg
1/4 cup millet
2 tablespoons ground flax seeds
2 3/4 cups whole wheat flour

Maybe as you look at it, YOU can figure out to improve  the recipe. I figured that the slow cooker would be similar to a bread maker. So off I went. First I had to grind the flax seeds. (Photo to to the left). Now maybe I went wrong in that I substituted the millet for barley. Actually I ground the barley and made my own barley flour.  (Photo to the right.)

After mixing, I put it in the crock pot, as the recipe suggested. It said the bread would rise in the cooker. At about the half way mark, I turned the bread over so it would brown evenly. As you can see, it did rise.

And it did brown.

The problem is that it was just too dense for my taste. And the crust was hard. Itt was probably overcooked. Yet in the very middle it was still “doughy”.  

It is edible. My husband came back for seconds. And admittedly it’s a very filling kind of bread. But it’s just not right. Should I have kneaded it? Should I have let it rise? Put in more white flour?  (In fact I did substitute one cup of whole wheat flour for one cup of white flour so it would have more gluten.) Turn down the heat? Cook it for less time? Give up on bread making? Get a bread maker?  Keep trying to get it right? I don’t know!