While my enjoyment of cooking is a fairly recent thing, I have long enjoyed making breads of different kinds and thanks to my husband’s ravings on Facebook, I have received a lot of requests for my whole wheat bread recipe.  This is a recipe that belonged to one family friend and was given to me by another.  I had tried many times over the years to make whole wheat bread and it always turned out dry, crumbly, and rock hard.  But this bread…this is bread is YUM!

Whole Wheat Bread (for Bosch)

(Adjusted for Kitchen Aid by Me)

Grind approximately 5 ½ to 6 cups wheat (which should yield approximately 9 to 11 cups flour).

½  cup oil
½  cup honey
3 ¼  cups warm water
4 cups wheat flour
1 Tblsp dough enhancer (vital wheat gluten-optional)
1 Tblsp. Salt
2 Tblsp. yeast

Mix flour and other dry ingredients in mixing bowl.

In a separate bowl, mix liquid ingredients.  Slowly add to dry ingredients.

Continue to add flour to about 8 to 10 cups total until dough begins to cleanly pull away from mixing bowl.  If mixer begins to sound strained, stop and knead by hand.

Coat dough with oil and allow to rise until double in a warm place under a towel.

Punch dough down and separate into two to three portions, approximately 1 1/4 # each. Shape into loaves and place into greased bread pans.  Return to warm place and allow loaves to rise under a towel. Heat oven to 350o and bake 25-30 minutes.

As the recipe states, the original was created for Bosch.  So, if you happen to have a Bosch, you can actually double all of the ingredients and this should make up to 6 loaves of yummy, warm bread.

If you do not have a Bosch, but have a Kitchen Aid then the type of KA will be important.  I have a “Professional 600” model and it can handle this amount of flour.  A good friend of mine has started making this recipe but has a less-powerful model, so she halves this recipe, but is still very pleased with the results.

Also, as you can see in the photo at the bottom, I get two very large loaves.  I can get three normal sized loaves out of this recipe, but they seem to be a bit drier.  So, at the request of my beloved, I make what you see below.

One more note on wheat.  I have been told that at least one reason why my former attempts at wheat bread were unsatisfying was because of the type of wheat I was using.  Until recently, I always just purchased the whole wheat flour at the grocery store.  Apparently, this has no nutritional value (or at least very little) and the processing causes it to lose many of the qualities that make for good bread.

So, on our Texas Tour in May, I bought a wheat grinder from a friend who was selling hers.  Now, I will confess, I have never tried this recipe with store-bought wheat and at this point I think I would sooner just buy a store-bought loaf of bread before I go through all the effort of making home made bread and risk it not turning out, but I suppose one could try it and see how it goes.  Regardless, I am now a convert to fresh ground wheat.  It is so much better and more flavorful.  If you do not have access to fresh ground wheat or a grinder, perhaps you can beg some off a friend so you can at least try it before deciding to invest in a grinder of your own.  The grinding process itself is pretty quick and (at least with my machine) could be entrusted to a responsible, older child.

Anyway, that’s the process.  It’s really an easy recipe and totally worth the effort!  Enjoy!

~ Sara