One of the most amazing changes our family has made over the years has been switching to home-made whole wheat bread using flour we grind ourselves. Not only is it so much healthier than stale store-bought bread using flour processed and stripped of most nutrients, but it tastes better too! Here are a few basic recipes. We use the first one for our basic loaf at least every other day (with 4 kids, it goes fast!). Basic Bread Recipe1 1/3 cup water
1/4 cup honey (we use honey granules but you can use regular honey also)
1/4 cup powdered milk
1/4 cup oil
1 1/4 tsp. salt
3 ½ cups fresh ground wheat
3-5 tablespoons gluten (mixed in wheat with a fork, but don’t disturb the water. How much gluten you add will depend on the gluten level of the batch of wheat you are using. Not enough and you won’t get any rise… Start with 3 on your first batch and work from there.)
2 ½ tsp. Yeast
***Place the ingredients in pan of the bread machine in order starting with the first. After placing the next to last ingredient, the wheat, be sure to put a small trench in the wheat to place the yeast so that it is not touching any liquids.
***I use my bread machine to warm and mix all ingredients as well as make a regular loaf. If I am doing a variation or specialty bread, I simply set my bread maker on the dough cycle and then use my oven to bake the specialty bread item.
***I grind my wheat in bulk, so I freeze my wheat on grinding day, and then get it out of the freezer each day I am making bread so as to ensure it is fresh and contains maximum vitamins & minerals.
VARIATIONS
Garlic rolls:
I use olive oil for the oil
add:
2 tsp. To 2 ½ tsp. Of minced garlic
1 tablespoon of Italian seasoning
optional ½ cup of sharp cheddar cheese
**sprinkle cheese on top of rolls before rising/baking
Cinnamon Raisin Bread:
Use original Basic bread recipe with the following added ingredients before it is kneaded.
½ cup to 1 cup of raisins
1 T. cinnamon
*optional—diced or grated apples add nice flavor as well!
I use my bread machine to mix all the original ingredients plus the raisins. Once mixed and begin to rise slightly, I roll out the dough and cover with cinnamon& sugar mixed. Can also put a small amount of shaved butter slices on it. Then roll up. Pinching edges. I like to make 2 small loaves—great to give as gifts and keep one for family or can make one large. Rise in oven & bake.
Rise: 40-50 minutes @ 175 degrees
Bake 20-25 minutes (depending on loaf size) @ 350 degrees
We bought our wheat-grinder, honey granules, and organic wheat from http://www.breadbeckers.com. They have lots of information on every aspect of bread-making!
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Would very much like to see more in your homesteading area. All I could find was this one recipe. Do you keep animals? A garden? Bees? etc. Any home improvement projects? Thanks.
Hi Cheryl,
That is certainly coming! We’re really new at this – just started the blog in January, but with Spring here and Summer coming on we definitely plan on doing more on that topic. Thanks for the comment and for stopping by. 🙂
Hello,
What Yeast do you use in your bread recipe?,
Is it instant?
I’m new to baking from scratch and I see there’s
an instant yeast and one that needs proofing?!?!
Not sure what proofing even is! :o)
Thanks Much!
Hi there – we use instant dry yeast. We’re not sure what proofing is either! 🙂
My ten-year-old son has taken up bread making! He is quite good at it, and is wanting to make wheat bread. I happened across your website, and I love it! We try to cook as much as we can from scratch, as we are into healthy, real food- not fillers and chemicals. We want to try this recipe, however, we don’t have a bread machine. Would this work without it?
Good for him!! 🙂 How wonderful! We love to make bread, but being a teacher as well, I really depend on my bread machine. I have done a few things by hand, but not much when it comes to loaf making. I have looked into it, but after going to many stores asking for kneading hooks, I realized that not many people do it any more! The recipe should work fine by hand, but he may need to add a little more flour while kneading it. Let us know if you try it! Hope it turns out well for him! This is so wonderful for him to start out at a young age.
Thanks for stopping by, Brijette! Great to meet like-minded folks! Look forward to hearing from you!
God Bless,
Kim
We made this bread and the kids loved it! It worked pretty well without having a bread machine. We’re going to try the cinnamon swirl rolls next. I can’t wait!
Sorry just saw this, Brijette – so glad you liked it! 🙂
Hi-
I am still looking for a good sandwich bread recipe and I am also a teacher, so my time is limited! I have 3 questions –
Do you use instant yeasts or active dry?
Why do you milk powder?
I have a bread machine, but prefer to only use the dough cycle, not bake the loaf. When the dough cycle is done, do you shape it into a loaf and place in a bread pan? I need to let it rise again? And how long/what temp to bake?
Thanks!
Sorry for not getting back with you sooner on this!! We use instant dry yeast – we buy ours in bulk at Sam’s. The milk powder is lowfat and also a great staple to prep in bulk. There are also other reasons:
http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/22252/dry-milk-in-bread-purpose-and-substitutions
We use the dough cycle for pizza crust, rolls, calzones, desserts, etc. When making rolls or even a loaf (yes, we do that sometimes), put it on top of warm, draft free place (top of oven while it’s warming up, for example) and cover to let rise. With our yeast, we don’t do that more than once. Bake at 350 and anywhere from 40 mins to hour depending on loaf size. Rolls take far less time (15-20 mins). Our Zojirushi bread machine makes the loaf in a nice shape though, so most of the time when just doing loaves we just let it bake on the ‘quick wheat’ cycle. From beginning to end, we can have a full loaf in 2 hrs, 3 mins. Much easier! 🙂
So glad you found our site – hope you’ll come back and let us know how it goes!
Hi Jennifer! I don’t know if you already do this, but here’s how I make make a soft crust bread for sandwiches. Bake whatever your favorite bread is, but don’t let it cool in the open. When your bead cools just enough to get it out of the loaf pan, immediately wrap it in a microwave-proof saran wrap. It seals in the steam and when it cools, it will be a nice soft-crusted bread for sandwiches. You can butter the top just slightly before wrapping for an extra yum!
Hi-
I have now been making this since Christmas break…… we love it! My husband wants to try to double and use our mixer to knead it and then just let it rise in a bowl so that we can make 2 loaves at once…… not sure if it will work. We really like it!
thanks!
Jennifer
Thanks for the kind words, Jennifer – glad you like it! 🙂
Hi again-
What brand of dry milk to you use and where do you purchase it? We try to only by organic dairy and the dry milk in the grocery store is expensive.
Thanks!
Hi, Jennifer!
So glad you have been using the whole wheat recipe. We use it often at our house! Morefields sure love bread.
We buy organic drinking milk regularly, but have been unable to find organic powdered milk. We buy our powdered milk in bulk at Sam’s wholesale. Since it is only 1/4 of a cup, it last a long time.
I too bake/make as much of our food as possible. I bake bread about twice a week in the winter and once every few weeks in the summer (I make multiple recipes in the summer and freeze it).
A few neat tricks I have learned along the way – don’t ever add more wheat flour once you start kneading, it will cut the gluten strands (if you must add more use white flour – yep the store bought stuff – hubby grinds wheat for me but I buy a 25 pound bag of white flour about once a year).
Roll/shape your dough with oil not flour on the counter.
You can also depending on the area/humidity/sea level etc add lemon or lime juice or vinegar (I use about 3 Tablespoons in a recipe that makes 5 loaves)
I kneed my bread in my kitchen aid mixer – no bread machine for me – it works wonderfully.
Don’t knock it down and raise a second time – knead it then shape into pans and let rise.
Bread that is done will read 200 degrees on an instant read thermometer – pull the pan out, flip the loaf on out and poke the bottom quickly, if it is not done just flip it back in the pan – averages about half a minute a degree that you have to add once it gets close – so if it reads 180 I add 10 minutes.
LOVING your blog!!
Cheers
Danni
Thanks for the great advice and encouragement, Danni! 🙂
I’m confused as to why gluten is added considering that whole wheat has gluten. Why the need for more?
It depends on if the wheat was raised during a rainy season or not. Sometimes, if it was, it can be very low in gluten (or so we’re told). We went through a batch like this where all of a sudden it stopped rising and we couldn’t figure out what it was. When we added gluten it solved the problem. So, it depends on the wheat – although adding the gluten makes it more ‘bread-like.’ Thanks for the question!