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Brendy’s Whole Wheat Bread

It was wheat this morning

Making bread from all natural ingredients is not only satisfying but extremely healthy. Grinding your grains immediately before mixing insures optimum food value and flavor.

MAKING WHOLE WHEAT BREAD USING ALL NATURAL INGREDIENTS Ingredients: (Makes 4 loaves)

* 5 cups warm water
* 13 -16 cups whole wheat flour
* 1 cup flax (or 3/4 cup oil if you don’t care about it being all natural)
* 1/2 cup honey (or 3/4 cup sugar if you don’t care...)
* 3 pkg. of yeast
* 1 tablespoon salt
* Optional: 1 cup soybean puree or 2-3 tablespoons of lecithin. This is an emulsifier and helps make the bread moist. It also prevents the crumbling that so often happens with whole wheat bread. Soybeans work better than lecithin. Update: All that mucilage in the flax seems to do the same job very nicely. We no longer use soybean puree when using a cup of flax.

Bake at 325 degrees F for 35 minutes.

Directions:

Start yeast by putting a tablespoon of honey in 1/2 cup of luke warm water, stir to dissolve the honey, then add the yeast and set it aside to let it grow.

Grind the flax with about 3 cups of wheat, immediately prior to making your bread. Mix 5 cups of water with the 7 cups of the wheat and flax flour. Mix for 3 minutes. Add the yeast mixture, salt, honey, and soybean puree, (oil if you didn’t use flax) and mix well. Add 2 more cups of flour and mix well. Now, add 3 cups of flour gradually while kneading or mixing with a bread mixer. If using a mixer, let it mix on slow speed for 10 minutes. Then add about 1-3 cups of flour slowly until the dough pulls away from the sides of the mixer bowl. See the photo below.

If doing it by hand, continue kneading and adding flour until it has an elastic feel and is not overly sticky. It doesn’t get quite as smooth or satiny as white bread dough gets. (don’t add too much flour or the bread will be too heavy) It is important to knead it to bring out the gluten in the flour. Just stirring it until it is blended is not nearly enough. The amount of gluten in flour varies and this is why the amount of flour for each recipe also changes. It takes some practice to get used to the feel. You can’t knead it too much.

Set the dough aside and let it rise until it has about doubled in bulk. Punch it down, then let it rest 10 minutes. Divide the dough into 4 sections and knead and shape each piece into a loaf and then put it into greased 5” by 9” bread pans. If using smaller pans, make more loaves. Again let it rise. The loaves should double in size and then bake at 325 degrees F. for 35 minutes.
Extra hints you may find helpful (up to recipe)

Mix flax with wheat before grinding. (Our grinder plugs up if we grind the flax seed by itself.) If you have a stone grinder it may get too plugged to use if you don’t mix enough wheat with the flax. Be careful. You can clean it by putting rice though it. Another possibility, if you don’t have a wheat grinder, is to blend the cup of flax with 4 cups of water at the blender’s highest speed, then add it to the remaining cup of water. To protect the nutritive value of the oil in the flax, don’t grind until immediately before it will be mixed. And then use or discard any unused flax you grind.

Use warm water. The warmer dough will speed up the yeast when it is added.

The amount of flour you put in will be a different amount for every batch. If using a mixer, you need to add flour until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl (see photo above) .

Remember, the yeast requires warmth to grow. The colder your house is, the slower it will work and goes dormant at 63 degrees F (14C). It works best between 80-95 degrees F (24-35C) and slows down above this until it dies at about 109 degrees F (46C). I sometimes set the rising dough out on the counter. To push things along if I’m in a hurry, I place it in a slightly warmed oven. Warning! Remember, yeast dies at 109 F. Be sure your oven isn’t too warm. Leave it on for about 1 minute and then turn it off before ever putting the dough in. This way if you forget to turn your oven back off, you’ll never ‘bake your un-risen dough (like I have) before you intended to.’ After your loaves have risen, take them out to preheat your oven. Be very gentle with the dough. You don’t want it to fall before you even start to bake it. This shouldn’t be a problem unless you’ve let it rise to the maximum. White bread can rise 3 to 4 times in volume but twice is enough for whole wheat. If the bread falls a bit after it is baked, it could be because it had risen too much.

The yeast eats the honey or sugar, so don’t go off and forget the dough. After the honey is gone, your dough will not rise any further!

(My husband has a mental block on forming loaves. This is how he does it. It works pretty good and could be a good way to learn if you’ve never done it before.) When shaping the dough into loaves, put flour on the table and work the dough on this. Flour your hands to keep the dough from sticking to you. Work a little flour into the dough until it is elastic and somewhat smooth. Knead it out flat about the length of the pan. Roll it up, stretching the dough as you go to prevent air bubbles from being trapped inside. Tuck the ends down, then put it in a greased loaf pan. Some people now like to poke three rows of holes every 1/2 inch or so apart down the loaf to release any trapped air bubbles. See below.

After the bread has risen in the pans, place the bread in the pre-heated oven, being careful to keep equal space between each bread pan and the walls of the oven. Cook for about 35 minutes. When you take it out of the oven, turn the bread pan upside down. Your bread should fall out of the pans. If it doesn’t, run around the sides of the pan with a table knife. (Don’t let it cool in the pans as it will sweat.) Place the loaves on a cooling tray. (Note: You can tell if it is really done by flipping it lightly with your finger on its side. If it has a hollow sound, it’s done.) Now rub butter on top and after it has cooled, put it in plastic sacks. We love it best with butter and honey when it is hot, right out of the oven. Our three kids have been known to polish off a loaf all by themselves in five minutes flat (oink, oink).
Preparing the soybean mixture: (up to recipe)

1. Boil soybeans about an hour until soft (they never get as soft as most beans). Then blend them in an electric blender, using as little of the water the beans were cooked in as possible. We make a whole bunch at one time, measure out single cups and place the mixture in small plastic bags. Then we throw them in the freezer. Just before making bread, we pull one out and throw it in the micro-wave to thaw it out.

2. If you have the right kind of grinder, you could grind 1/2 cup of dry soybeans and throw it in with your freshly ground flour.
Final Notes: (up to recipe)

It is hard to make a good loaf of 100% whole wheat bread even when your wheat kernels are bulging with starch. If they are shriveled, forget it. You can just about guarantee success if you cheat, and add a bit of starch on your own by substituting 2 or 3 cups of white flour for the whole wheat flour. Don’t be disappointed if every batch doesn’t turn out just right. Occasionally, even my bread doesn’t turn out. As one of the arts, it takes a bit of experience and practice to get a really great loaf of bread every time. But it’s worth the trouble.