Whole Wheat Bread

I grew up with a Mom who made 12 loaves of bread by hand, each week. I grew to hate homemade bread because it was heavy with a hard crust (she added too much flour and baked it too long). As I was growing up and earned a degree in foods, I learned a lot about how things work when it came to making good food, especially bread. Now I have friends who come over so that I can teach them how to make my yummy wheat bread. Be aware that is this is NOT 100% whole wheat, because I am using hard red wheat to grind my own flour, it is too heavy to make great 100% whole wheat bread. For yummy 100% whole wheat bread use the hard white wheat flour. Plus I am using my Mom’s recipe with one addition. ;} Here we go.

Supplies: For one 1 lb. loaf of bread (what I used is in parentheses)
1 cup fluid (warm water)
1 Tbs. fat (olive oil)
1 Tbs. sweet (honey)
2-3 cups flour (½ whole wheat {I ground myself} ½ white)
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. yeast
2 Tbs. gluten
Measuring cups
Measuring spoons
Nonstick cooking spray
Bread mixer (you can do this my hand)
Bread pans (since I am quadrupling this, 4-1 lb. pans or 3-1.5 lb. pans)

Put the warm fluid into the bread mixer.

Add the salt, and the gluten.

Add the sweet and the oil.

Add the yeast and the whole wheat flour (½ of the total amount of flour)

Turn the mixer on until mixed. Turn off and throw a towel over the mixer and let it rise for half an hour. Now is a good time to discuss how yeast works. Yeast is a living organism that eats sugars and complex carbs (flour). When it eats, it produces the by-products of alcohol and CO2. The CO2 gas needs a place to go so it creates little and sometimes larger, spaces in the bread, and that causes the gluten to stretch and the bread to rise, the little holes you find in the bread is where the gas was, until baking released the gas, cooked out the alcohol and hardened the gluten.

Add the rest of the flour (enough that the dough will scrape the sides of the bowl clean, yet still be a little sticky). Let it knead for 7 minutes. You will have to knead for the same length of time if you knead it by hand.

Spray the counter top with the nonstick spray and put the dough in a mound on the counter. Cover the dough with the towel and let it rise to double (½ to 1 hour).

Spray the loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray. (If you are making more than one loaf of bread, divide the dough into 1lb. loaves (or 1½ lb. loaves if that is the size pan you are using).)

Flatten out your lump of dough

and then roll it into a loaf shape,

and put it into the bread pan. Cover it with the towel again

and let it rise until it is above the edge of the pan.

Preheat oven to 350°. Place the pans in the oven and bake the 1 lb. loaves for 25minutes, (if making 1.5 lb. loaves, 30 minutes).

When done remove from the pans and put on a cooling rack. Put a little grease (butter) on top of the loaf for a shiny top crust.

If you cut bread while it is still hot, the loaf will squish and stay squished. If you just have to have that hot piece of bread with butter, just be aware of that. Beautiful, light, moist and yummy! Enjoy.