Fresh Baked Bread

http://www.flickr.com/, photo by avlxyz

Whenever I smell fresh bread baking, I think back to my grandma's kitchen. On summer mornings, she'd have the windows open and the breeze would waft through, and she'd let me help her knead bread, watch it rise, punch it down, and bake it. Ah, the glorious smell of that fresh bread baking. I can still remember what it tasted like.

I felt a little bit of that joy when I discovered Great Harvest Bakery bread. It tasted so real, so different from the sugar filled processed bread at the grocery store. We're continually trying to pare down the grocery budget, though, and their bread is about $5.00 a loaf. Our family loves it, but I wondered if I could bake my own and save a little bit of cash.

For some reason, I felt like this would be way too hard to do--I'm not sure why, especially after watching and helping Grandma so many times--and my first attempt seemed to prove my fears. It was awful. Then I found a decent recipe. This morning, my 9 year old made it, with only a little help and direction from me. 

This really isn't very hard to do at all. It takes just a few minutes to add all of the ingredients and knead, and then the dough spends most of its time unattended while it rises, requiring only a couple of small steps along the way.  

If you have a bread machine, you may want to try Lisa Leake's recipe for whole wheat bread, but my recipe is for those of us who have to knead it ourselves. I adapted a recipe from The Bread Beckers, Inc. It isn't too complicated, it makes our entire house smell just like grandma's used to, and it tastes amazing. I know we have to limit our grains, but there's just about nothing better than a warm, fresh slice of homemade bread with some melting butter slathered all over it.

Whole Wheat Bread

Ingredients:
2 cups very warm water
3 and 1/2 tsp. quick rise yeast
1/3 cup olive oil
1/4 cup honey
1 egg
5 cups whole wheat flour*
2 tsp. sea salt

*I don't use the white whole wheat flour for this recipe. The regular, 100% whole wheat flour tastes the best (to me, anyway).

Directions:
Drop the yeast into the water and briefly whisk. Let it rest for a few minutes until it foams up a little bit, then whisk in the oil, honey, and egg. Add all of the salt and about half the flour and mix thoroughly, then add the remaining flour and knead until smooth and elastic. (You may have to add a little extra flour if the dough is too sticky.) Place in a large greased bowl, cover with a towel, and let it rise until double.

Knead again, then shape into loaves (makes 2) and place loaves into greased loaf pans. Some people don't cover the pans while they rise--I usually throw a towel over them, but I'm not sure how critical that is. When the loaves have risen about double again, put them in a preheated oven and bake at 350 for about 30 minutes.