HBin5: Soft Whole Wheat Bread

I'm loving how easy it is to make the recipes in "Healthy Bread in 5."  This week's challenge was soft whole wheat bread and a few of its variations.  I mixed up a batch of the bread dough about a week ago and let it sit in the fridge for at least 24 hours, as directed.

The bread turned out great on my first attempt.

I enjoyed eating this bread with homemade apple butter.

A week later, I used the rest of the dough to make the apple struesel bread.  I was so excited about this recipe.  The bread has a swirl of diced apples, walnuts, raising and raw sugar.  It's like a healthier version of cinnamon-raisin bread.  It looked beautiful right out of the oven.

The only strange thing is that both loaves of bread ended up with a "crack" in the top crust.  It was especially noticeable with the apple struesel bread because the filling was oozing out.  I made sure to put the swirl's "seam" on the bottom of the loaf, so I'm not sure why it cracked.  Is anyone else having the same issue?  I'm wondering if it has to do with the "gluten cloak."

I didn't have time to make the hamburger/hot dog buns for this week's challenge.  Plus, I used up all the dough making the soft whole wheat bread loaf and the apple struesel loaf.  I must be making my loaves too big, because I usually can only get three loaves out of a batch of dough, not the four that the book calls for.

Anyhow, I enjoyed the apple struesel bread for an afternoon snack today, with a cut up pear on the side.  So good!

Really enjoyed this week's project.  I'm pretty excited about the next project: red beet buns and chocolate tangerine bars.  It will be quite a culinary adventure!