Now that I’ve gone to work for a nutrition start-up, I’ve become even more aware of what I’m eating these days. More fruits, vegetables and whole grains among other things. So I had a bit of time this past weekend and decided to try my hand at this Framed Cooks Irish brown bread, which looked to be relatively healthy and tasty.

Of course, there was still some room for improvement with the whole grain to white flour ratio — so I increased the amount of whole wheat and dropped the white flour used in the recipe. And it worked out pretty well, if I say so myself. See this and other substitutions (based on what I had in my pantry) below.

The recipe:

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour (I dropped this to 1 cup and opted for more whole wheat flour)
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoons baking powder (didn’t have this at home, so went with 2 1/2 tsp baking soda)
2 teaspoons salt
1 cup whole wheat flour (I upped this to 2 1/2 cups)
1/2 cup oat bran (went with 1 cup of oat bran since I didn’t have wheat germ)
1/2 cup wheat germ
1/2 cup rolled oats oatmeal (increased this to 1 cup and skipped the steel cut oatmeal)
1/2 cup steel cut oatmeal
2 cups buttermilk (made this with 2 cups low-fat milk plus 2 tbsp of white vinegar)
1 egg
1/4 cup honey

Since I didn’t have buttermilk in my fridge, I made some by adding vinegar to my milk, letting it sit for 5 minutes. I turned the oven on to 350 degrees F and then combined the dry ingredients, holding back 1 1/2 cups of whole wheat flour, in a bowl. In another bowl, I added the now-soured milk along with an egg and honey.

After whisking the liquids together, I then added it to the dry ingredients and stirred them together, making a sticky dough.

I turned the dough out onto my well-floured countertop, divided it in half and proceeded to lightly work the dough into two rounds, adding whole wheat flour as I went. Once I created the two loaves, I placed them on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. I also slashed the top of each loaf with an X.