Cooking: Healthy Homemade Whole Wheat Bread

Many of my friends think it's crazy that I make as much bread as I do.

My family just loves it.

And honestly, homemade bread is WAY better than store bought (mostly!).

So about half of the time, I bake our bread.

I love to eat it in the morning as toast. I think it's probably the best toasting bread I've ever had.

Fred even eats it as part of his "sammich".

The recipe I use has been passed down from person to person, friend to friend, for what I can tell has been a LONG time.

I gained the recipe when Melody shared it on Facebook almost two years ago. She got the recipe from Maria who got it from Kay.

I love recipes with a history.

Especially if they're yummy recipes.

Even better if they're healthy too!

So without any further adu, here's the recipe!

Healthy Homemade Whole Wheat Bread

INGREDIENTS:

• 3 1/2 cups quite warm water
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1/2 cup gluten flour (this is important! I get it at Sprouts, a local farmers market store)
• 1/2 cup oil
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1 cup wheat bran
• 4-5 cups ground whole wheat
• 2 Tbsp. yeast
• approx 1/2 cup regular all-purpose flour
• Non-stick cooking spray

DIRECTIONS:

Put the warm water into a large bowl (if you're using a stand mixer, I just put it into my mixer bowl). Add the salt, gluten flour, oil, honey, and wheat bran. Using a whisk attachment, mix it for a minute or so. Change your attachment to the dough hook, and add the whole wheat flour. Mix it together until the flour is mostly incorporated into the dough, then add the yeast.

Mix the ingredients together until everything is evenly incorporated, and then start adding the regular flour, just until the dough pulls away from the edge of the bowl.

Remove the dough from the bowl and place it on a lightly floured surface. Divide the dough into the number of desired loaves. Spray your hands with your non-stick cooking spray, and form the divided dough into loaves. Be careful not to handle the dough too much.

Place the dough into pans that have been sprayed with your non-stick cooking spray. Cover the pans with a towel and let the dough raise until the dough reaches the top of the pan.

Put the loaf pans into a cold oven. Turn the oven to 350 degrees and bake for approximately 30-40 minutes. 

Remove bread from pans immediately and cool on cooling rack.

Recipe Notes:

• I like to change up the grains in our bread. Today's bread is a combination of wheat bran, oat bran, ground flax, and spelt. It's yummy! The spelt gives it a bit of a nutty crunch and reminds me of German bread. (I don't change any of the other ingredients... I just add a bit here and there. Generally around 1/4 cup or 1/2 cup - depending on the grain consistency - to the liquid in the beginning
• This recipe makes three small loaves, or 2 larger loaves. I keep them small. I freeze two of them once they are REALLY cool, so that we always (mostly) have homemade bread ready to eat.

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