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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