Whole Wheat Bread

I love the taste of freshly-baked whole wheat bread. By making it myself, I can decide what ingredients I use, grind my own wheat berries, and make it much less expensively than I could ever buy it.

Hard White Wheat

By purchasing and storing the wheat in berry form, you can safely keep it for years without spoilage. Whole wheat flour, in contrast, goes rancid very quickly. I usually only grind up enough for a couple of batches of bread at a time, using half immediately and freezing the other half.

My grain mill is a Wondermill Junior Deluxe unpowered hand mill. I decided to buy this one after getting great reviews from a fellow bread-maker in Ft. Worth. The great thing about this mill is that you get two different types of grinding stones. One set of stones is for grains; the other is stainless steel and can be used for oily things, such as flax seed, peanuts, coffee, etc. I did add my own modification in the form of a plastic bowl guard around the grinding stones. Some of the newer models have a modification built in to keep the flour from making a huge mess as the grinding is going on… my simple (and inexpensive) modification works fine, too.

It takes about 15 minutes for me to grind up about 5-6 cups of flour. Today I also enlisted the help of my boys (free labor). The wheat we ground today was the last of the hard red wheat that I have here in Georgia. The boys actually prefer the taste of the hard white wheat. It seems to have a milder flavor.

Whole Wheat Flour

After grinding the wheat, I use my breadmaker to knead the dough. I’m primarily interested in the bread machine for mixing and kneading the dough. I do not bake bread in the machine. The main problem with baking bread in the machine is that there is no flexibility for how long your bread needs to rise properly. That, along with the sometimes strange shape of the loaf, makes baking in the machine unattractive (at least to me).

Here’s my recipe:

Whole Wheat Oatmeal Bread

1 cup lukewarm water
1 egg
4 T. oil
2 T. honey
1 T. vital gluten (this is a must for 100% whole wheat bread… makes the texture much better)
1 tsp. dough enhancer (check ingredients on this… some of them out there have weird ingredients)
1/2 c. oatmeal
3 cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp. salt (I like kosher salt)
2 1/2 tsp. yeast (I buy SAF yeast by the pound)

Dump all the ingredients into the bread machine in the order recommended by the manufacturer (wet ingredients first in my machine). Let the machine run through both knead cycles on the standard breadmaking cycle. This should take about 1 hour.

After the 2nd kneading, split the dough in half, form loaves, cover with a dish towel and let rise in two greased 8″ loaf pans. The time this takes will vary, depending on temperature of your kitchen… just watch until it doubles.

Bake 25 minutes in 350 degree oven. Remove from pans immediately, cover with dishtowel and let cool on a rack.

Doubled in size...

I usually freeze one loaf immediately (unless we wipe out one loaf immediately). This bread is so delicious for sandwiches.

Is it cheating to use the bread machine? I don’t know… I do know that it kneads it very well and makes it so easy to do that I rarely buy bread in the stores. To me, it’s just a good use of a useful tool. I have never cared for the result from a bread machine when the entire baking process is used. I only like it for the kneading help.

Notes: You can vary this recipe very easily to suit yourself. For example, if you would like to add in some ground flax seed for additional nutrition, you can substitute 3 T. of ground flax seed for 1 T. oil. You’ll need to either increase the water slightly, or use just a bit less flour for this. Also, if you don’t want to use honey, you can use 2-3 T. sugar instead. You can also leave out the oatmeal and just use all wheat flour, substituting about 1/2 c. flour for the 1/2 c. oatmeal. Many times I will use part whole wheat flour with part all-purpose white flour to suit my picky youngest boy. What we moms will do to sneak extra nutrition into foods kids like! When you aren’t making it 100% whole wheat, you can omit the vital gluten and dough enhancer, too. Instead of vegetable oil, you can use butter or shortening or coconut oil…the list is endless…

One thing I do plan to learn to do when we get back to New Mexico is bake bread in my solar oven. I have seen many online articles about this and will definitely make use of the techniques when I have decent solar exposure to use (where we live now our house is surrounded by huge trees — I kid you not — there is virtually no place I could place the solar oven and expect to get several hours of decent sun other than right out by the road in front of our house…).

Do you have a favorite bread recipe? I’m always looking for new ideas…

The finished product.

Here’s the finished product. Yum.