Whole Wheat Homemade Bread

Posted by CK in bread, easy, healthy, recipe, vegetarian, whole wheat

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*DISCLAIMER: This is a perfect recipe for a nice breakfast in bed on Valentine's Day morning! <3*

For quite some time now, C and I have been wanting to make our own bread but were honestly a little too scared to try it out. I knew how time-consuming bread could be and quite frankly didn't want to spend time waiting for dough to rise, or put in the effort to knead the dough. When A suggested that we spend our Sundays cooking though, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to try it out since I would be spending my day in the kitchen anyways. So I found a very simple recipe, and followed the instructions (with a few changes) to make 3 loaves:

Ingredients:

• 3 cups lukewarm water
• 1 1/2 (1.5 packs) tablespoons active dry yeast
• 1 1/2 tablespoons salt
• 6 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

Preparation:

1. In a very large bowl, put together your flour, yeast, and salt.
2. Pour in your water and stir until combined, just a few minutes.
3. Cover your bowl with plastic wrap and a dry towel for 2-5 hours. (We left it for approximately 5 hours - pretty much all day while we were cooking up our other meals)
4. Divide your dough into 3 loaves. Cover each loaf with flour and form it into a ball. (If you don't want to make all your loaves at once, wrap 2 of them with plastic wrap and freeze)
5. Lay the remaining loaf onto a baking sheet or onto a pizza stone sprinkled with cornmeal. Let this dough rest for about 30 or so minutes.
6. With a sharp knife, slash the top of the loaf into 3 lines or a criss-cross pattern. This helps let out some steam in the dough. If you don’t slash your bread, the bread will most likely make it’s own tear somewhere during cooking.
7. Preheat your oven to 450 degrees and add a small pan filled with 1 cup of water on a lower rack for a water bath. Bake for 30-35 minutes - until it becomes golden. The water bath is super important, it avoids your bread sticking to your baking sheet!

This might look like a long process, but it's really just the waiting that takes a while. Our bread turned out quite dense and full of wheat flavour, but C and I really enjoyed the result nonetheless! If you want your bread to expand a little bit and so be a little fluffier (and less dense in taste), subsitute 2 cups (or up to half) of the whole wheat flour with all purpose flour.

Don't forget your 2 loaves in the freezer! Once you want to use them, thaw them overnight on the counter in a bowl covered with a dry towel, bake in the morning and wake up to a fresh and healthy breakfast! :)

Enjoy!

- CK