Whole Wheat Bread, Round 3

This is my third go 'round for Whole Wheat Bread. The first attempt went really well and the bread was delicious. The second time was a disaster, though I was pretty sure I had duplicated the same recipe I used the first time. But here was the issue: I previously used Arrowhead Mills Stone Ground Whole Wheat flour which was perfect, but the second time I used another brand, Hodgson Mill. What I didn't know was that the Hodgson Mill bread was gluten free, or something similar. When I used the bread recipe on the Arrowhead Mills package, but used the Hodgson Mill flour, the result was a crumbly mess that absolutely fell apart when I sliced into it. There was no saving the bread and it was a complete waste. I couldn't figure it out until I finally looked on the side of the Hodgson Mill package at their bread recipe, which calls for wheat gluten. So this third time, I followed the recipe on the Hodgson Mill package, used the wheat gluten, and voila! Delicious bread once again.

Basic Whole Wheat Bread

2 C warm water
2 packages of yeast
3 T brown sugar
1 T Hodgson Mill Vital Wheat Gluten
3 C Hodgson Mill Whole Wheat Graham Flour
1/4 C vegetable oil
1 t salt
3 to 3 1/2 C bread flour, divided

Put water in a large bowl. Add yeast, stir to dissolve. Add brown sugar, gluten and whole wheat flour. Beat well, about 200 strokes. Let yeast develop for about 10 minutes. Add oil and salt; mix thoroughly. Add two cups of the bread flour; beat well. Work in enough of the remaining bread flour to form a soft dough.

Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead 6 to 8 minutes, or until dough is smooth and elastic. Place in large oiled bowl and turn to coat. Cover bowl with a clean towel. Let rise in a warm, draft free place for about one hour or until doubled in bulk.

Punch dough down. Divide dough into two equal parts and form each piece into a loaf. Place in greased 9x5x3-inch loaf pans. Cover and let rise about 45 minutes, or until nearly doubled. While dough is rising, preheat oven to 400 degrees. Bake loaves about 35 minutes or until top is golden brown. Bread is done when it slides easily from the pan and sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom. Let cool on wire racks. Yield: 2 loaves.

This time I didn't try to include nuts and seeds to the dough as I was going for simplicity. As far as the 3 to 3 1/2 cups of bread flour, I think I only used the two the recipe calls for in the first paragraph. When I was kneading the dough it got very dry on me and semi crumbly. I just continued working it and it eventually came together, but there was no way I needed an extra cup or more of bread flour at that point.

Also when I divided the dough I wasn't completely careful with making sure both amounts were sized the same, nor did I shape them into a loaf before I put them in the pans. As a result, my loaves were a tad misshapen but again, they still tasted fantastic. And I didn't use a bread maker with this recipe. Just the good old oven. It's not hard to make bread, but it's just something that takes ultimate precision. Much like ensuring your flour isn't gluten-free.





It's so good to pop a few slices in the oven for a few minutes and then slather them with real butter. Yes, REAL butter. None of that fake stuff, yogurt butter or whatever else is on the shelves. Those products have their place in the cooking world, but fresh hot bread and real butter is a combination like no other. And the smell of fresh hot bread baking is unreal.

And while baking bread is a very precise science, it's not so difficult that it can't be done. I've never used a bread machine and as long as you follow the directions and know exactly what your recipe calls for, you too can have bread success!

Extra Recipe #1 - Whole Wheat Bread

As part of the healthy eating we've been doing, we are only eating whole wheat/whole grain bread. It's healthier and, I think, tastier than white bread. White bread is all the Husband and I ate when we were kids - but didn't everyone? There may be some crunchy granola kids out there whose parents only fed them organic soy beans and tofu smoothies, but not us. We ate white bread and we loved it. We had no idea it wasn't the best thing for you to do, like riding on the handlebars of your friend's bike while not wearing a helmet and then getting scratched and scraped all over when she crashed into a blackberry bush. But anyway, we ate white bread and did crazy things and we all survived.

But now we see all of these healthy foods come out with a huge emphasis on whole grains and how they're so much better for your body. And something I don't understand is that whole grains are the original form of these little buggers that haven't been refined. Once the grains are refined, they're used for white bread. So why did everyone go through all that trouble to remove the husks and refine these grains to turn them into white bread? Why weren't they just left in their original form? It would have been much less work.

So, armed with this information we are now eating whole wheat/grain breads. They're a little expensive at about $3.50/loaf and the loaves are smaller than what you'll get for a loaf of white. We were in a new Kroger in town recently and found this brand of flour:

First of all, it says organic - the magic word that makes everything healthier, right? Ehh, not so much, but this isn't a post about organic vs. non-organic food. Anyway, this whole wheat flour sounded like the perfect excuse to make my own bread. Plus, there was a bread recipe on the package which was reason enough to make it. Recipe to come soon.

The recipe indicated it would be about two hours to make the bread from beginning to end. This was somewhat bad timing because I didn't begin this process until about 7:45pm, but I figured 'what the heck.' This dough called for yeast, which was something I haven't used in a while when I make bread. I've been using a bottle of light beer for the yeast, which actually really works well. Corona has been my beer of choice. The only problem with using beer as yeast is that the bread really develops that yeasty beer taste after a few days. You have to eat it quickly or it will start to ferment. You don't want that.

The dough went into the oiled pan and as I searched in vain for a warm place in our drafty positively air tight, lovely 75-year old house, I suddenly remembered our pseudo laundry room right off of the kitchen. I plopped the bread pan on top of the dryer, laid a damp cloth over the bread, set the dryer for 40 minutes, and went off to watch TV. Foolproof, right? Well, the dough did rise but not quite enough. The recipe called for it to double and it was probably another 40 minutes from completely being doubled, but at this point it was approaching 9:30 and I knew it still had 45-50 minutes to bake. That was probably the downfall of this whole experience - the fact that it didn't rise all the way. Must be a better steward of time next time I do this.

I also put some sesame and sunflower seeds on top of the dough before it went in the oven to emulate the store bought brands. Next time I may try to bake those into the bread because when it came out of the oven, the seeds and nuts hadn't adhered at all. When I inverted the bread onto the cooling rack, all of the seeds and nuts fell off onto the counter top. Lesson learned. It absolutely smelled heavenly, though! I immediately cut it into slices to let the heat escape so I could store it and get to bed - it's about 10:30pm by now and I'm fading fast. The Husband worked late and had just arrived home when the bread came out, so he was the first to try a piece. It was good but kind of dense. The full rise definitely would have prevented that.

I do want to try to make this bread again, though. I'll do a few things differently: full rise, seeds and nuts in the bread, and mix in less flour even if it's really sticky. It called for an initial 2 cups of flour but up to 2-3 more to add in to the final dough. I used a little more than 5 because the kneading process was becoming a sticky mound on my cutting board. Thank heavens for my bench scraper or I would have been totally lost. This was a good first attempt and I'm going to give it another shot.