I have made various soups and casserole-type dishes in mine, but I wanted something new. While searching for recipes, I came across a couple things that I would have never thought you could make in a slow cooker — bread and cakes. How cool is that?

I make bread all of the time and I was excited to see how fast and simple the slow-cooker bread was. It didn’t have the delicious crust that I get with my standard recipe, but it is great for sandwich bread.

If you want to see all of the crazy things you can cook in your slow cooker, check out A Year of Slow Cooking. Good stuff.

The biggest challenge is finding an oven-proof dish that fits in your slow cooker.

Ingredients
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

Method

• Grease a deep ovenproof dish (I used a 1.5 quart Corningware dish). Make sure it fits in your slow cooker.
• In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water; mix and let sit for five minutes.
• Add milk, oats, salt, oil, honey, egg and ground flax seeds. Mix well.
• Add flour and knead until smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes.
•  Turn dough into the prepared oven-proof dish.
• In bottom of the slow cooker, place 1/2 cup of water and a trivet or something to elevate the dish off the bottom of the cooker.
• Place dish on the trivet; set a piece of oiled foil over the dough. From what I can tell, the foil is to keep the condensation from making the top soggy.
• Cover and bake on high for 3 hours.
• Remove and let cool on a wire rack.

Shared in Whole Foods for the Holidays.