Tasteful Tuesday

I love home made bread. I love the smell while it is cooking and I love it hot out of the oven with butter and jam, YUM! I DON'T like paying over $3 a loaf for mediocre bread at the store! So, I decided to start making all my bread at home. I know, you are all thinking I am crazy. However, I feel much better about this stuff going into my kids tummies than some of that other stuff. My mother in law has a good wheat bread recipe that I used to make occasionally. When I decided to make my own bread, I wanted it to be whole wheat. Thankfully my kids aren't opposed to eating it. Then I stumbled on this great 100% Whole Wheat bread that takes about an hour to make. What made it even better is that my husband bought me this great wheat grinder for my birthday! Now, we buy our wheat in bulk and I grind it fresh when I am ready to make bread. This is much cheaper than paying $3.50 for a 5lb bag of wheat flour.

It has taken me a while to get this recipe down...not because it is hard but because I was letting it rise too long. I would make it at a friend's house on our baking day and it would be soo good. Then I would come home and try it and it would crumble all over the place. It is a very moist bread and it would still be crumbly. So, if you have problems with that, just don't let it rise as long. I really only let it rise for the 15 min. It ends up being in about the middle of my bread pan when I turn the oven on. It rises very nicely to the top of the pan once the oven is turned on for baking. Now that I have it all figured out, I am in bread heaven. 100% Whole Wheat Bread, no preservatives or other icky stuff and it is made in about an hour. Can't beat that!

100% Whole Wheat Bread

3 cups warm water

1/3 cup honey

1/3 cup oil

1 1/2 Tablespoons yeast

3/4 Tablespoon dough enhancer (if you have it)

6 cups whole wheat flour (you can do part white, part wheat if you want)

3/4 Tablespoon salt

Preheat oven to 170, then turn oven off. Mix all together in mixer and knead 8 min. Remove from mixer and knead a few times by hand on oiled counter. Place into greased loaf pans, put into warm oven and let rise 15-30 min. Leaving pans in oven, turn oven on to 350 and start timer for 25 min. Remove from oven and cool on wire rack.

Makes 2 loaves.

**I don't have the dough enhancer so I bought some gluten flour and I add a few tablespoons of that.