Rare Book Curator, Carolyn Shankle, is cooking her way through SCUA’s vast North Carolina Cookbook Collection! She will have a new recipe each quarterly newsletter. For this installment of Cooking Through the Counties, we’re passing through Dare County, North Carolina, to make Shirley B.’s recipe, Honey-Wheat Bread. This recipe comes to us from the God Willing Cookbook, second printing, 1985. Based off of the title alone, it would be understandable to think that this is another church cookbook.

From the introduction:

The GOD WILLING COOKBOOK is the work of an unusual sisterhood that began on the Outer Banks of North Carolina in 1966. A group of women friends living and visiting in the area organized a retreat for women whose lives were affected – directly or indirectly – by the abuse of alcohol.

The funds raised by the sale of the cookbook supported the purchase and upkeep of the Deo Volente [God Willing] retreat house on the shore of the Albemarle Sound.

What intrigued me about this bread recipe is that you could use either honey or molasses as the sweetener – so I made a batch of each. For those counting, this potentially results in four loaves of bread.

The yeast preferred the molasses, rising higher than the honey-sweetened dough.

Just for fun, I used two each of Fire King and Pyrex [old logo] glass loaf pans for baking the loaves. The honey bread was baked in Fire King; the molassess in Pyrex. I could not tell a difference in the distribution of heat.

And the verdict? Both versions of the recipe resulted in a hearty bread suitable for savory sandwiches, cheese toast, or dipping into your favorite soup. The honey bread had a softer crumb than the molasses.

Thank you, Shirley B., for sharing your recipe with us!