Delicious and Simple Homemade Whole Wheat Bread
Recipe By: 
Recipe type: Bread
Prep time: 
Cook time: 
Total time: 
Serves: makes 4 loaves
 
Ingredients
  • 3 tablespoons SAF instant yeast
  • 2 rounded tablespoons gluten flour (I use ¼ cup when I am mixing in non-gluten flours like oat or barley)
  • 1 tablespoon REAL salt (kosher or sea salt work great also)
  • 5 cups warm water
  • ½ cup honey
  • ½ cup olive oil
  • 12 cups whole wheat flour (my favorite is hard red wheat but I often throw in a couple cups of oat or barley flour)
Preparation Instructions
  1. Mill 8 cups of wheat grain.
  2. Put all the other ingredients into the bowl of a mixer.
  3. Add about 6 cups of the flour, until you have a kneadable dough. This is the point where the mixer you have is going to determine your next step.
  4. This is a large recipe, if you have the usual 4-5 quart KitchenAid stand mixer you will probably be smart to pull the dough out and hand knead the rest of the way. I have a 6 quart mixer that my husband replace a plastic part on with a metal so it can handle this recipe, however, the first time I made this, I did just about burn out my mixer. Now that the plastic part has been replaced I have no problem with this recipe.
  5. Of course the ideal bread dough mixer is the Bosch but I haven't had a reason to upgrade to that yet so I haven't. If you are fortunate enough to have this lovely device you will want to start out mixing at speed 1 and then increase to speed 2. With my KitchenAid I usually put it on the 4 with the dough hook.
  6. If you have a mixer that can handle this then continue adding flour until the dough pulls away from the sides and then knead for 10 minutes. I do usually add all the flour and it comes out perfectly.
  7. If you are hand kneading then continue adding the flour as you knead and maybe add an extra minute or so on to the kneading time.
  8. While the dough is kneading, brush your loaf pans with butter.
  9. Put a little oil or soft butter on your hands and divide the dough between the pans.
  10. Let rise on the counter in a warm spot until doubled in size. At this altitude (about 7000ft) I only let mine rise about 15 minutes, just while the oven is preheating. But if you are at sea level you may need more like 25-30 minutes. If you try it let us know!
  11. Place in a preheated 350˚ oven for approximately 30 minutes.
  12. Allow to cool about 10 minutes or so in the pans and then remove and allow to cool completely on a wire rack before bagging.
  13. I usually keep one loaf out to eat and freeze the others and they actually do freeze very nicely!
Recipe by Foods of Our Lives at https://www.foodsofourlives.com/2012/04/delicious-and-simple-homemade-whole-wheat-bread/