Down Mulberry Lane

Our Honey Wheat Bread...

Julia asked how I make my bread, so I am sharing.  The original recipe that I played with came out of Favorite Bread Machine Recipes by Norman A Garrett.  It was called Honey Wheat Bread.  I wanted a 2 pound recipe, so I tinkered with the recipe.  I also changed the proportions of white to wheat flour as my girls wanted a heavier denser wheat bread. 

Now, this was not something that just magically happened, that my girls wanted heavy whole wheat bread, but rather I tried for years recipe after recipe to find what they would eat... and I was always met with "eh... it's ok" and after one piece each the bread went out to the chickens.  However this last summer at Farmer's Market, we happened to be next to the organic whole wheat bread lady and she will NOT share her recipe, by the way... award winning bread... and I don't blame her, LOL.  But she offered samples of her different varieties of bread... and my girls sometimes came hungry to FM so they would ask if they could have a sample... which she always nicely let them have it... she even started giving the girls her leftover samples if she ran out of bread.  Her bread was quite dense, but soft and good.  Her secret to good bread is to use freshly ground wheat... she ground her wheat just before baking her bread.  She also ground it twice for softer wheat flour.  Anyways, we would trade her bread for our goodies and we loved the trade.  Once FM was over... the girls were begging me to make some homemade bread.  So this is where the recipe hunting began.  We tried this bread and liked the flavor basically, but the girls said it was not heavy enough... so I switched some ingredients and this is what we came up with...that everyone is happy enough... Happy enough that the girls come up to me and lovingly softly say... "I love homemade bread with butter and jam, mmmmm, ummmm, ummmm". 

So, here's our recipe... but it is heavy... the dough is heavy and not the typical soft dough...

For a 2 pound loaf, which I mix in the bread machine, then split into two loaves and bake in the smaller 8.5 inch bread pans (the 9.5 inch ones don't fit in my toaster):

1/2 c. warm water

1/2 c. warm milk

4 T. honey

2 TB butter (I just cube and drop into the water)

2 eggs

3.5 cups of whole wheat flour

1 c. all purpose flour

2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. sugar

2 tsp of yeast... the second tsp is rounded... so probably 2 1/4 tsp.

I just put into the bread machine to mix into dough.  I let it rise, then take it out and shape into loaves, placing into sprayed bread pans.  Set it by our wood stove to rise.  Then bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes. 

Warmly, ~Melissa 

Thank you!

8:12 PM, January 10, 2007 .. Posted by BlueApple

Thank you for the recipe! Do you grind your own wheat? I don't know where I've been but I've never tried doing it...that will be my next "new thing to learn".
Julia
As for my daughter, it was a spontaneous rupture - I've never heard of it, but apparently it can happen!