The Staff of Life

Make homemade bread. Just give it a try. It is so wonderful. Your home will smell warm and delicious, you will feel a nice sense of accomplishment, and you may never want to eat store-bought bread ever again. Or is that just me? Here is my recipe for Whole Wheat Bread (I was given a similar recipe at the LDS Home Storage Center aka Cannery, I made a few modifications, and voila!):

Whole Wheat Bread

4 cups warm water
3 Tbsp yeast
1½ Tbsp sugar
1/3 cup oil
1/3 cup honey
½ cup vital gluten (optional)
1 Tbsp salt
7-10 cups whole wheat flour

1. Rinse mixing bowl in warm water (to warm it up). To the warm bowl add water, yeast, and sugar. Mix and allow to sit until foamy, about 5 minutes.

2. Add the oil, honey, gluten, salt, and about 3 cups of flour. Mix the dough in a mixer adding flour slowly until the dough cleans the sides of the bowl (you want a thicker dough). Knead the dough for 9 minutes in the mixer.

3. Grease four loaf pans (about 8.5”). Form dough into loaves and place into pans. Cover with a towel and let rise for 20-25 minutes.

4. Place on the upper rack of a cold (not preheated) oven. Set the temperature at 350°F and bake for 28-30 minutes. The bread will rise more as the oven heats up.

Makes 4 loaves, approximately 16 slices each
5381 total calories (78 Calories per serving)

Now, don't be discouraged if you don't have a mixer, this bread is really easy to make by hand as well. Just do it all the same except once you can't really stir the ingredients together start to knead it with your hands. Once a cohesive ball of dough is formed, turn it onto a lightly floured surface and knead it adding more flour as necessary to get to 7-10 cups. Knead for about 10 minutes, form loaves, place in pans and continue with the directions above.

Also, my mixer can't handle 10 cups of flour so I halve the recipe and make two loaves at a time. The only real tricky part is halving the honey and oil. I don't worry about it, I just estimate them by adding them together in the same measuring cup (they will add up to 1/3 cup). Sometimes you get more honey, sometimes more oil. It still works out just fine. Do you think people 200 years ago were as precise as we think we are?

Don't feel limited to a plain loaf of bread, try to add herbs or cinnamon (with the flour) for more flavors. I added cinnamon (1 Tbsp) to one loaf and used it for French Toast (Thanks for the breakfast idea Tammy!).