Whole Wheat Bread Recipe

With this recipe, you mix the dough in your bread maker and then bake it in the oven. And it is GOOD. I found the original recipe in a bread machine cookbook, but I've altered it QUITE a bit! I made 3 batches of it today, so I know it works and it tastes GREAT! Add the ingredients according to your bread machine directions. I add them in order of the recipe because my bread maker gets warm before it mixes the ingredients at all.

3/4 cup plus 2 Tablespoons water
1 large egg
2 Tablespoons softened margarine
1 1/4 cup white flour
2 cups whole wheat flour
1/4 cup oatmeal (optional)
2 Tablespoons white sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 teaspoons bread machine yeast (I prefer RedStar)

After dough cycle is finished, remove dough from bread maker. Let dough rest 10 minutes. Then I divide the dough in half and form into loaf shapes. Cover with a towel and let rise 45 minutes. Bake at 375 degrees for 15-20 minutes.

This recipe is an odd-size. It is too big to put in one loaf pan, but too small for two loaves. So, I usually just form it into a loaf shape and bake it on a cookie sheet. The oatmeal is just to give it some different/extra nutrients. You can't even see the oatmeal pieces with this little amount. But if you add more, the dough doesn't rise well. This bread does get stale easily. So, be sure to keep it wrapped up when you aren't eating it! Also, as soon as you take it out of the oven, slide it off the pan and wrap it in a dishtowel. It'll help the crust stay soft and the inside moist.

It also makes a DELICIOUS pizza crust! I usually add a couple of teaspoons of garlic powder and roll the bottom in cornmeal when I make pizza crust. That is what we are having tomorrow! I make a deep dish crust for me and a thin crust for Thomas. I just bake the crust in a quiche pan to get a good deep crust. If you want it to be REALLY good, after the crust has cooked for about ten minutes, spread some garlic butter on it, then top it and finish the baking! But, since we are trying to eat healthier, we'll skip that part this time.

Hannah really likes this bread. She even eats the crust on the wheat bread because she can't tell what part is crust and what part is bread. This also makes a WONDERFUL white bread. Just use all white flour. This bread is a lot more dense than traditional homemade bread. It freezes and thaws really well. Because it is such a dense bread it doesn't lose a lot of its size when you defrost it like a lot of breads do. I highly recommend it!