Perfect 100% Whole Wheat Bread

Well friends, this is why it has taken me so long to even start a blog. It's been a while since my last post. My focus has shifted to food storage this past couple of weeks and I pick up 120 lbs of apples and 60 lbs of pears to can. I didn't add any sweetener to my apple sauce and the pears i did a syrup of half water and half grape juice. I also invested in a dehydrator and have been dehydrating some of those apples.

Pretty successful for someone who hasn't done much before.

During my canning expedition I came across a bread recipe of my sister-in-law's. It was a mix of whole wheat and white flour and also contained shortening. The bread was good so I decided to take the recipe home to see if I could get it to work for us...And it did! Well for the most part. I had to try a second batch to get it to rise how I wanted but I think I got it this time. I found a recipe for 100% whole wheat bread but it was never very consistent and I felt like it had a million different ingredients. I have come to learn over the past couple of days that I think my biggest problem with bread was not kneading it long enough. When I tried this new recipe the dough rose beautifully until I made it into loaves. I decided to do some research and learned that the culprit was most likely my kneading. I found the information here to be quite useful. So I tried a second loaf and kneaded it about 10 minutes and it worked! Here are a couple of pictures of my failed loaf and the one I am very proud of. These pictures really don't give it justice either. It is fluffy and lite and the crust is even chewy!

 Perfect 100% Whole Wheat Bread

2 ¼ cups warm water

2 Tbsp honey

1 Tbsp yeast

2 tsp salt

3 cups Whole Wheat Flour

Mix the water and honey, set aside. Combine the yeast, flour, and salt. Add the water and honey and stir with wire whisk until smooth, 100 strokes. Cover and leave until bubbly, 1 hour.

½ cup honey (or 1/3 cup honey + 2 ½ Tbsp water which I did so it wasn’t as sweet)

3 Tbsp coconut oil (in solid state)

Microwave honey and oil in microwave for 30 seconds, stir to combine. Add to the bubbly dough.

3-4 cups Whole Wheat Flour

5 Tbsp vital wheat gluten

3 Tbsp flax meal (optional)

Add the flour, gluten and meal to bubbly dough and knead with mixer 7-10 minutes. Place in greased bowl and cover until doubled, about an hour. Oil work surface and split dough in half. Shape into 2 loaves and place in greased pans. Cover and rise until doubled. Bake in 375 oven for 30 minutes.

I also watched this video to get an idea of how to shape my loaves.