Just another day in baker's paradise

I decided to branch out on my bread making. Since getting the Healthy Breads in Five Minutes a Day book, I'd only tried out one master recipe. So, I decided to give another one a go. This time, I tried the Hearty Whole Wheat Sandwich Loaf. This recipe contained the same primary ingredients as the Soft Whole Wheat, but with a higher wheat ratio and no honey.
Here's the dough rising. It looked a little sad, in my opinion.

And the finished product. I have to say, not wildly impressed. It was too hard on the outside. And the inside was too dense and too crumbly to be good for sandwiches. It was ok as toast, but I'm not going to bake bread specifically to use as toast.

I thought perhaps there had been some error in baking on my part, so when I used the second half of the dough, I skipped the steam portion, and cut the baking time. But same problem. Too hard, too crumbly. Iwon't make this dough again, at least not as sandwich bread. Maybe as garlic knots or some of the other suggestions for the dough. But we'll see. With so many available options, no point in spending too much time on one that doesn't work for me.

The same day as the bread I decided to make chocolate chip cookies. I LOVE chocolate chip cookies. But, I know they're not all that good for you(although also not all that bad if you know what you're putting in them).

As I've mentioned before, we don't use any Nestle products, or any products owned by Nestle(like Gerber, betcha didn't know that one!). But there is something to be said for the Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe. And I have no problem using the recipe so long as I'm not using any of their products. Upon suggestion of another site, I decided to modify the recipe and use half the amount of butter it called for. And, as usual, I skipped the nuts.

Very nice looking cookies! And guess what?! They tasted really good, too!
Now that I've tried with half the butter, I don't intend to go back. The taste was not affected negatively. The cookies were able to bake without overly browning. The other blog(if I remember it, I'll post the link), also suggested using half wheat flour, so I'll try that the next time. Can't hurt!