Last fall my husband and I decided we needed to be more health conscious. As a result I decided to make homemade whole wheat bread instead of buying bread from the store.
I was a little worried since my kids do not like whole wheat bread. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that they love my bread, especially warm from the oven.
The first few loaves I made tasted okay, but looked awful. They fell in the oven and were flat on top. My husband had some interesting looking sandwiches as I fine-tuned my recipe and finally created the perfect loaf. Now my loaves turn out round and beautiful. So I
thought I’d share my recipe so you can make the perfect loaf to share with your family as well.
We started by purchasing a wheat grinder and mixer. We had a hand grinder, in case of emergencies but after grinding 8 cups of flour I knew there was no way I was going to do that on a regular basis. After reading endless reviews we ended up buying a whisper mill. It
grinds quite quickly, doesn’t spit white dust everywhere, and is not as loud as I remember my mom’s grinder being.
We also bought a mixer. Whole wheat bread tastes better when mixed in a mixer with a dough hook. I know it sounds funny, but it’s true. When you knead dough by hand you have to add flour so it doesn’t stick to you and the cupboard, when you use a mixer you end up adding less flour. So the bread is lighter and less crumbly. You can make it by hand but it requires at least 8 minutes worth of kneading and is quite a workout. You could also make one loaf in a bread machine on the dough setting.
We bought a Bosch three-loaf mixer. Now I wish we had spent a little more and gotten the five-loaf mixer. You will just have to decide how much bread your family eats each week and how often you want to make bread. Realizing that homemade loaves are a lot shorter than the white sandwich bread typically purchased at the store.
Now that you have your wheat-grinder and mixer it is time to assemble the ingredients. I will be discussing what ingredients you need as well as providing the recipe in upcoming blogs.