Homemade Whole Wheat Bread

Here goes the first recipe to hit our new blog - homemade, 100% whole wheat bread. If you've got all the right tools, this recipe is a breeze to make, is so much cheaper than store bought bread, and is infinitely healthier than anything you can buy at the store. You'll need a Bosch mixer (or half the recipe will work in a KitchenAid mixer), and a wheat grinder if you're going to grind your own wheat, otherwise you can buy whole wheat flour. Now for the recipe...

6 cups warm water
2 Tbsp. yeast
2/3 cup oil
2/3 cup honey (or sugar, but honey will make your bread softer)
2 Tbsp. oil
2 Tbsp. salt
2 Tbsp. gluten (optional and I don't usually use it)
2 Tbsp. dough enhancer (optional and I don't usually use it)
12 to 16 cups whole wheat flour

Put all ingredients into your mixing bowl, starting out with about 4 cups of flour. Turn the mixer on and slowly add 1 more cup of flour at a time, waiting for each cup of flour to become well incorporated into the dough. I know 12 to 16 seems like a giant difference, but I always lose track of how many cups I've put in anyway. When the dough starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl, but is still a bit sticky, you have put enough flour in. When I do actually count and keep track, it's usually about 13 to 14 cups of flour total. Mix for a couple of minutes in your mixer.

After the dough is mixed, dump it all onto a greased countertop and separate into 5 equal loaves. Put each loaf into a greased loaf pan (9 X 5). I use these loaf pans: USA loaf pans. They are of course not necessary, but wonderful if you're a regular bread maker.

Let the dough rise in a warm oven until the loaves are nice and puffy and risen a bit above the top of the loaf pans. I usually turn my oven on for 30 seconds to a minute while I am mixing the dough, then turn it off. If it's too hot, I'll leave the oven door open for a few minutes to let it cool. When it's nice and toasty, but not roasting in there, I place all 5 loaf pans in the oven, cover them with a light towel, shut the oven door, and turn the light on to keep it warm. If you don't want to bother with heating the oven, you can fill a 9 X 13 pan with hot water and place it on the bottom rack of your oven, below the loaves of bread, and turn the light on and it will have the same effect. Mine usually need 45 minutes to an hour to rise enough.

After they've risen, I take them out of the oven, preheat the oven to 325, then place them back in the oven and bake for 35 minutes.

After the 35 minutes, take them out and let them rest for about 5 mintues in the loaf pans, then dump each one out carefully and place on a wire cooling rack until they're cooled enough to put in a bread bag - or to dig into!