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Thread: 100% Whole Wheat Bread from Scratch (With Pics)

  1. #1

    Talking 100% Whole Wheat Bread from Scratch (With Pics)

    Ok, Well its taken about 20 test loafs, but I have finally made it. Thats right, I have created 100% Whole Wheat Bread from scratch with spectacular results. The process has been long and frustrating, but the reward of being able to bake my own bread from scratch is certainly worth the failures that I suffered through.

    What inspired me to bake my own bread, as opposed to buying it from the store?
    The backbone behind baking my own bread came from an urgency to create a self sufficient food supply (or at least build up long enough storage to last a year). As I am a college student, sandwiches are an absolute staple of my everyday food. I probably go through a loaf and a half a week and thought that this was the first food I needed to "add" to the food storage program.

    Achieving food stocks that last over a year

    To be able to bake bread for a year or longer, I needed to get materials that would not spoil within a year. This meant grinding my own flour and making the recipe as simple as possible. The recipe that I chose relies on 7 simple ingredients. They are: water, milk, whole wheat flour, honey, canola oil, salt, and yeast. If needed the oil and milk can be substituted for with just water or for the milk you could use milk powder. There is no problem storing water, honey, or salt. The other four all have storage lives all over a year. In the event that resources were cut off for up to a year, this recipe would work out fine for me.

    Grinders and Wheat

    One of the keys to making home made bread is grinding your own flour. This may seem overwhelming at first, but I promise it is not hard and even fun. There are two options for grinding: manual or electric. Electric mills are very efficient and save a lot of time, but in case of crisis, it is best to have a manual backup. The manual grain mill I use to make my bread is the Family Grain Mill. I bought it from efoods direct for a 130 dollars and have been very satisfied with it: http://www.efoodsdirect.com/products...and-crank.html. The second thing about grinding your own flour is choosing what type of wheat you are going to use. There are multiple types of wheat depending on your taste preferences. To see a good summary of the major types of wheat go here, http://www.breadexperience.com/types-of-wheat.html.

    I buy my wheat from Walmart in 25lb bags from wheat montana. It costs $ 12.50, but does have some varied availability around the US. To check if your local walmart has it, just enter your zip code here: http://www.walmart.com/ip/Prairie-Go...Wheat/14122834. The wheat is white hard spring and has done very good for me in my loaves. An excellent benefit to using wheat montana is that it is NON GMO and certified chemical free. It is not technically organic but is the cheapest per lb that I have seen in the "organic" market. If you don't mind non-gmo versus gmo, you can go to a local lds food storage site and pick up 25 lb for 5 bucks I believe.

    The Recipe!

    This can certainly be modified, but I have seen great results with this that the pictures can attest to. This recipe makes one bread loaf and can be multiplied by what ever factor to make more loaves.

    Wet Ingredients:

    1. 1/3 cup of Water @ 110 degrees (Don't go over this as it will kill the Yeast!)
    2. 1 cup of Milk @ 110 degrees
    3. 1/4 cup of Canola Oil (Olive works fine to and makes it even healthier)
    4. 1/4 cup of Honey

    Dry Ingredients

    1. 2.25 tsp of Instant Yeast (1 7 g Yeast Package)
    2. 1 tsp of Salt
    3. 2.75 Cups of Wheat (Unmilled)

    Mixing the Dry Ingredients: Once you have milled the wheat into flour, you must mix the salt well into the flour and then add the yeast. Do not just pour the salt in and add the yeast. If you pour the yeast on the salt, it will kill the yeast as salt is an inhabitant to yeast. Just remember to: Add Flour & Salt --> Mix --> Yeast --> Mix and you will be good.

    Mixing the Wet Ingredients: The most important thing about mixing the wet ingredients is to heat the milk & water up to luke warm temperature of 110 degrees. Just don't go anything above that or you risk killing the yeast and lowering the bread rise. Another good tip is to put the oil in first and then add the honey (this makes the honey pour out of the measuring cup without sticking).

    Once you have the wet & dry ingredients in two separate bowls, you can add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Mix well and form into a ball of dough to start the kneading process. You should knead the dough for at least 10 minutes by hand. If you have a kitchenaid with a dough hook, by all means use that instead of hand kneading. The longer, the better. Kneading is especially important with heavy breads like 100% whole wheat. You can't really over-knead bread dough manually (maybe +25 on the kitchen aide would be a little much).

    An important note on kneading: Do not keep adding flour. You will find that the dough will be a little sticky (BUT THAT IS FINE). It should feel a little sticky and adding more flour to the bread will only inhibit rising! Remember whole wheat bread is very heavy, and adding more flour will only make it worse.

    Once you are done kneading, put the dough in a greased bowl covered with a warm moist cloth. You should then let the dough rise until about doubled. This will take more or less time depending on humidity and temperature of your cooking environment. I recommend putting it in a warm environment around 105-110 degrees. I usually utilize a dehydrator for this. For me, the dough will rise within about 45 minutes using this method.

    After your dough has doubled, take the dough out and gently form the ball into a rectangle whose width is about a little less than the length of a a bread pan. Once you have formed the dough into a rectangle, slowly role the dough into a cylinder from one width end to the other. Then place in a greased bread pan and let rise until dough is about an inch or less over the top of the pan. This usually takes me about 35-40 minutes. It is ok to let the final rise stop a little early (before one inch over pan). This is because the bread will often have a little "oven spring" to it. Also, if you let your dough rise to long on the second rise, the bread will sometimes deflate during the baking period.

    Now its time fore Baking! The oven should be preheated to 350 degrees and should probably be turned on halfway through the second rise or so. Bake the bread for about 40 minutes or until internal temperature of the bread is about 190-200 degrees. Once taken out of the oven, glaze the bread with butter and let sit for 2-3 hours to cool. Then SLICE AND EAT!


    Pictures!

    Grain Mill.



    Freshly Milled Flour.



    Mixing Ingredients.



    Dough Before First Rise.



    Dough After Second Rise.



    Final Products.








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  3. #2
    grains are the devil but that dont look half bad

  4. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by shemdogg View Post
    grains are the devil but that dont look half bad
    I have been baking my own bread for the last semester, and I can tell you I will never go back to store-bought white bread ever!

  5. #4
    My stomach is rumbling just thinking about how good that bread must have smelled while cooking.
    And it looks amazingly yummy too!

  6. #5
    that looks awesome. I've been looking for a decent recipe for this forever. Thank you!

  7. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by bwlibertyman View Post
    that looks awesome. I've been looking for a decent recipe for this forever. Thank you!
    Just remember, that this is recipe is assuming you are grinding your own flour. Regular flour works A LOT different then home milled. One of the problems I had with finding a good recipe was finding out how much wheat to mill.

  8. #7
    Your bread looks a lot better than any I've been able to make doing that method. Mine usually doesn't rise much the second time.

    The consistency of your bread comes out similar to how mine usually turns out, the banana bread consistency as opposed to being like store bought bread with the soft insides. Is there any way to get that consistency using fresh wheat?

    I also tend to use hard red wheat because that's all I have been able to find around here.

    I've been given the advice of adding wheat gluten. I've done so a few times but none of my bread has ever been successful. The fish are well fed.

    My success has been making bread in a bread maker using a boxed bread mix. Which is cheating, but it tastes very good.
    Definition of political insanity: Voting for the same people expecting different results.

  9. #8
    + reppy
    We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false. -- William Casey, CIA Director

    Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.-- Mark Twain

    When people like us-- the scum of society-- don't risk our lives when a rare chance comes our way, we become losers at that moment. So courage is the only thing we can rely on.-- Anchan
    Rick Simpson Hemp Oil



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  11. #9
    +rep for serious persistence and a great description.
    Those who want liberty must organize as effectively as those who want tyranny. -- Iyad el Baghdadi

  12. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by amy31416 View Post
    +rep for serious persistence and a great description.
    Agree with the persistence.

    I went through 3 different combinations in one day a few weeks ago.

    I tried a fresh ground wheat in the bread maker, a box bread by hand in the oven and a regular rising flour by hand in the oven.

    3 loaves of fish food. My wife is baffled by the amount of loaves I've tried.
    Definition of political insanity: Voting for the same people expecting different results.

  13. #11
    I also grind my own wheat for making pancakes, biscuits, bread, ext. Whole wheat bread one purchases from the store has 30 essential nutrients removed, and only 4 replaced ( what the industry refers to as enrichment).

    The wheat you grind yourself is far more nutritious especially in vitamin E . Here is an article that tells you where you can buy whole wheat, and other grains very reasonably (joining their free co-op makes it even more economical). They also have a recipe book available

    Sore Throat/ Head Aches/ Gaining Weight/ Sensitive To Carbohydrates? (Whole Wheat + more Resource)

  14. #12
    It says that hard red winter wheat is used for bread...

    how is white bread made?
    Definition of political insanity: Voting for the same people expecting different results.

  15. #13
    //
    Last edited by Natalie; 03-17-2011 at 07:38 AM.

  16. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by romacox View Post
    I also grind my own wheat for making pancakes, biscuits, bread, ext. Whole wheat bread one purchases from the store has 30 essential nutrients removed, and only 4 replaced ( what the industry refers to as enrichment).

    The wheat you grind yourself is far more nutritious especially in vitamin E . Here is an article that tells you where you can buy whole wheat, and other grains very reasonably (joining their free co-op makes it even more economical). They also have a recipe book available

    Sore Throat/ Head Aches/ Gaining Weight/ Sensitive To Carbohydrates? (Whole Wheat + more Resource)
    Yeah Definitely. Commercial Millers remove the wheat germ from their flours, which is one of the most nutritious parts of the wheat berry:

    To understand why the wheat germ is so important, consider that, of the nutrients in the whole kernel, the germ contains about:

    64% of the thiamine
    26% of the riboflavin
    21% of the pyridoxine
    7% of the pantothenic acid
    2% of the niacin
    8% of the protein.

    Ninety percent of the nutritional value of the wheat berry is contained in the wheat germ. And yet all of the wheat germ must, of necessity, be removed from commercial flours, including so-called 'whole wheat' flour. Wheat germ oil has almost no shelf life and becomes rancid very quickly. Rancid oil is a carcinogen, and government health regulations require the removal of the wheat germ oil from all commercial flours.

  17. #15
    That Great Value Canola Oil is almost certainly GMO nastiness. You should try to avoid the top four GMO crops: Soy, Corn, Canola, Sugar Beat. Organic/non GMO Canola cost a lot more but you should get that instead.

    Those pictures look awesome. Thanks for this thread. You have motivated me to try this out. I am going to have a lot of time after May, and I planned on learning cool stuff like this. I'm also going to teach myself to can veggies.

  18. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by Elwar View Post
    It says that hard red winter wheat is used for bread...

    how is white bread made?
    Commercial white bread is generally baked with a processed bread flour made from an assortment of wheats. The protein content and other characteristics of wheat can change from year to year based on weather conditions. So, the goal is always to get the bread flour to end up the same. Different ratios of different wheats are used to accomplish that. Of course, all of the processing strips out the bran and other healthy parts of the wheat. Even so-called commercial wheat breads only have a partial percentage of the bran returned.



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  20. #17
    I've linked to this book before, but i do highly recommend it. It's a great resource for learning about milling wheat for bread.
    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...6/eindotcom-20
    Last edited by Krugerrand; 12-08-2010 at 06:32 AM.

  21. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Elwar View Post
    Your bread looks a lot better than any I've been able to make doing that method. Mine usually doesn't rise much the second time.

    The consistency of your bread comes out similar to how mine usually turns out, the banana bread consistency as opposed to being like store bought bread with the soft insides. Is there any way to get that consistency using fresh wheat?

    I also tend to use hard red wheat because that's all I have been able to find around here.

    I've been given the advice of adding wheat gluten. I've done so a few times but none of my bread has ever been successful. The fish are well fed.

    My success has been making bread in a bread maker using a boxed bread mix. Which is cheating, but it tastes very good.
    Were you ever able to get spring wheat from those Mormon sources?
    http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showpos...3&postcount=12
    Last edited by Krugerrand; 12-07-2010 at 07:23 AM.

  22. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Krugerrand View Post
    Were you ever able to get spring wheat from those Mormon sources?
    http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showpos...3&postcount=12
    Never got around to it. I just signed up for their contact for the February harvest. Thanks for reminding me.
    Definition of political insanity: Voting for the same people expecting different results.

  23. #20
    That bread looks sooo delicious! I hope to make it and try some when I finish my semester finals and go home to a real kitchen.
    Way to go for the persistence! I'm sure that takes a few hours every week.
    You've given me motivation to start baking

  24. #21
    /bump

    I showed my wife your uber bread and she pointed out to me that Pastor A's wife has posted recipes on her blog for bread. Some of them she grinds her own wheat like you did. People here might be interested in some of her recipes.
    http://stevenandersonfamily.blogspot...read%20recipes

  25. #22
    Congrats on a tasty loaf. I am starting to like whole wheat bread that is made from course ground wheat berries. It has a more powerful texture and flavor compared to fine ground store bought wheat.
    A king metal slime draws near!

  26. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by jclay2 View Post
    I have been baking my own bread for the last semester, and I can tell you I will never go back to store-bought white bread ever!
    can't wait to steal your time and effort wasn't there someone on rpf that was baking the bread using natural yeast in the air??? have you tried this approach?? i have to find that thread hmmmm!!!
    2016 gop est business as usual, rules do not apply.

  27. #24
    Quote Originally Posted by EndDaFed View Post
    Congrats on a tasty loaf. I am starting to like whole wheat bread that is made from course ground wheat berries. It has a more powerful texture and flavor compared to fine ground store bought wheat.
    i have always loved whole wheat bread .I can eat white bread but perfer the whole wheat.
    2016 gop est business as usual, rules do not apply.



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  29. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by Baptist View Post
    /bump

    I showed my wife your uber bread and she pointed out to me that Pastor A's wife has posted recipes on her blog for bread. Some of them she grinds her own wheat like you did. People here might be interested in some of her recipes.
    http://stevenandersonfamily.blogspot...read%20recipes
    looking forward to trying these!!!
    2016 gop est business as usual, rules do not apply.

  30. #26
    Quote Originally Posted by Elwar View Post
    Your bread looks a lot better than any I've been able to make doing that method. Mine usually doesn't rise much the second time.

    The consistency of your bread comes out similar to how mine usually turns out, the banana bread consistency as opposed to being like store bought bread with the soft insides. Is there any way to get that consistency using fresh wheat?

    I also tend to use hard red wheat because that's all I have been able to find around here.

    I've been given the advice of adding wheat gluten. I've done so a few times but none of my bread has ever been successful. The fish are well fed.

    My success has been making bread in a bread maker using a boxed bread mix. Which is cheating, but it tastes very good.
    i am curious to see what i will have to adjust at 10,200 ft mmm whole wheat bread with green butter

    my goal is to make the bread using a solar oven! I also remember a thread awhile back using natural yeast in the air???? hmmmm.
    Last edited by speciallyblend; 12-28-2010 at 01:56 AM.
    2016 gop est business as usual, rules do not apply.

  31. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by speciallyblend View Post
    can't wait to steal your time and effort wasn't there someone on rpf that was baking the bread using natural yeast in the air??? have you tried this approach?? i have to find that thread hmmmm!!!
    Not sure about yeast in the air. In November I did Laural Robertson's Desem Bread found in the book below. It used only fresh ground flour and non-chlorinated water. It took about 3-weeks to get the natural yeasts to develop in the starter. The bread was fairly good. But, it would be categorized as a sourdough - which is not my thing. I ended up finding it to be too much work when I more so enjoy the taste of other easier to make breads.

    It was pretty amazing to get decent bread using only flour and water.


    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...7/eindotcom-20

  32. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by Krugerrand View Post
    Not sure about yeast in the air. In November I did Laural Robertson's Desem Bread found in the book below. It used only fresh ground flour and non-chlorinated water. It took about 3-weeks to get the natural yeasts to develop in the starter. The bread was fairly good. But, it would be categorized as a sourdough - which is not my thing. I ended up finding it to be too much work when I more so enjoy the taste of other easier to make breads.

    It was pretty amazing to get decent bread using only flour and water.

    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...7/eindotcom-20


    kewl i am not a big fan of sourdough but if i have to i can eat it!
    2016 gop est business as usual, rules do not apply.

  33. #29
    Soft white wheat is used for making biscuits, but not good for bread which requires more gluten to hold it together. Buying wheat from Walmart or the health food stores is rather expensive. Here is were I get it:

    For Bread hard winter red wheat : 7lb 1gal pail, 45 lbs in 6 gal bucket, 50 lb bag

    For Biscuits use soft Winter White Wheat: 7lbs one gal. bucket, 45 lbs in 6 gal bucket , 50 lb bag

    Note:
    I use a mixture of soft white and hard red for pancakes.
    Bread Beckers has all sorts of things for healthy eating (oatmeal, spout seeds, grinders, recipe books, and much more.
    To save on shipping join their co-ops

  34. #30
    Quote Originally Posted by romacox View Post
    Soft white wheat is used for making biscuits, but not good for bread which requires more gluten to hold it together. Buying wheat from Walmart or the health food stores is rather expensive. Here is were I get it:

    For Bread hard winter red wheat : 7lb 1gal pail, 45 lbs in 6 gal bucket, 50 lb bag

    For Biscuits use soft Winter White Wheat: 7lbs one gal. bucket, 45 lbs in 6 gal bucket , 50 lb bag

    Note:
    I use a mixture of soft white and hard red for pancakes.
    Bread Beckers has all sorts of things for healthy eating (oatmeal, spout seeds, grinders, recipe books, and much more.
    To save on shipping join their co-ops
    I go w/ the hard spring wheats for bread. WalMart wins in price on those if your local walmart happens to carry Wheat Montana's products.

    I tried to check Bread Becker's shipping on 50# bags ... but they don't have any in stock. It would cost me $21.50 in shipping to get a 45# bucket with them. So I'm guessing the totals around $50 per 50# bag of wheat. That's no bargain, but I consider it reasonable. I'm glad to know you've had good experience with them, I may purchase from them at some point.

    I've purchased soft white wheat from Honeyville Grain. I bought durum wheat for pasta from Walton Feed. Both of those experiences were positive.

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