Baking Basic Bread

I start off with the basic grains. I prefer to grind my own flour because it’s the tastiest freshest bread I can make. I generally buy my grains in organic bulk bags. This is hard red winter wheat. The recipe for basic stone ground whole wheat is at the bottom of this column.

Most of my cooking and baking I don’t bother with a recipe. With bread however you need to follow a recipe pretty closely. You can’t just throw bread together and expect good results.

Measuring cup of wheat berries

I scoop out a few cups of the wheat berries and get them ready to grind.

Small hand cranked grain mill

My old method of making bread flour was to use a hand cranked grinder that used steel burrs. But I chose to put this grinder in storage for emergency use only, because I had read somewhere that you eventually end up with microscopic bits of metal in the flour.

Fresh ground flour, sifted

Here’s the flour after grinding and sifting. The bran is intact in the flour.

Stone grinding mill

My newest method of grinding the wheat berries is a hand cranked blue stone granite mill. To check into one of these newer stone grinder mills, click here

Underside of the stone mill

The bluestone mill grinds the flour fairly fine. I can actually get pastry flour from this model.

letting the dough rise

I let the dough rise on the back of the stove.

Risen bread ready to bake

Once it ready to bake, I pre heat the oven to the right temperature and bake for the prescribed time.

Baked loaf of whole wheat bread

So here’s the basic whole wheat recipe.

1 3/4 cups warm water

2 tbsp of honey

3/4 tsp active dry yeast

3 1/2 cups whole wheat flour or more, divided

1 tbsp olive oil

1tsp salt

Mix the water, honey, and yeast in a bowl until it becomes foamy. Add 1/2 of the whole wheat flour, add the olive oil and salt. Mix with a spatula until it’s all together, then let it sit for about two minutes. Mix with your dough hook on low speed and add the other 1/2 of the whole wheat flour slowly until it’s combined and not sticking to the sides of the bowl. This takes about 5 - 7 minutes. Cover the bowl with a cloth and let it rest for about 15 minutes or so.

Grease the loaf pan and spread flour on a work surface. Put your dough on the floured work surface and shape it into a loaf. You can sprinkle more flour on until it’s not sticky at all of you need to. Put the dough into the pan and let it sit until the dough rises a little over the top of the pan. Baked in an oven at 350*F for about 35 minutes. If the loaf sounds hollow when you tap it, it’s ready to go. If not, let it bakes a few more minutes. Take the bread out of the oven and let it cool about 15 or 20 minutes before you take it out of the pan and set it on a wire rack. Let it cool for at least another hour so it doesn’t feel doughy in the middle. While the loaf is cooling in the pan before you remove it, you can coat it with butter if you want to.