Since cutting out the grocery store we’ve been making our bread from grain I grind myself. The grinder was the best purchase I’ve ever made. Not only are we saving money by buying our grain in bulk, freshly ground grain has a higher nutritional value since it hasn’t sat around oxidizing for months and I know it’s not rancid because I ground it myself.
Each week I’ve changed one or two things to my bread recipe which I’ve tweaked from the whole wheat sandwich bread recipe in Peter Reinhart’s Whole Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor
Each week we say the bread is amazing, the best yet but it somehow continues to get better each week. I’ve been holding off posting my recipe until it stopped getting better but I’m just going to post it now and make changes to it as I change the recipe more.
The one thing neither of these books tells you to do is to soak your grains first which I always do. It’s disturbing to me that whole wheat consumption is rising and so is Celiac’s disease so I take the conservative road – one that also makes your bread more flavorful with an amazing crumb structure. This recipe also works well using up to 50% spelt, or with hard white whole wheat flour instead of the hard red.
This recipe will make either 2- 9″ loaves or 3- 8″ loaves. You can also reserve one of the loaves for making rolls, hamburger buns, cinnamon rolls or breadsticks. This recipe calls for both a soaker and a sponge. It is a little more work to make two doughs the night before and then incorporate them on bread day but I’ve tried it every which way and the combination of the two takes your bread to a whole new level. It’s well worth the extra few minutes.
One final note before the recipe – I grind my own flour so you may find you need less than these quantities. Store bought flour has settled. By stirring your flour with a fork or whisk before measuring you will come closer to the quantities I am using here.
Soaker
3 1/2 cups whole wheat bread flour (I use hard red wheat)
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 1/2 cups milk plus 2 Tablespoons of whey (or you can substitute buttermilk, yogurt or kefir for the milk and whey but your bread will be tangier)
Mix all ingredients until it forms a ball and cover the bowl until you are done with the sponge.
Sponge or Biga
3 1/2 cups whole wheat bread flour (I use hard red wheat)
1/4 teaspoon yeast
1 1/2 cup filtered water plus 2 Tablespoons whey
Add all the Sponge ingredients to the bowl of a stand mixer and knead using the dough hook for several minutes until it forms a dough. Let it rest for 5 minutes then knead it for one more minute.
Place this dough ball on top of the soaker dough ball in the bowl, cover it and let it sit on the counter overnight. If you won’t be making bread the next day you can put this in the fridge for several days but bring it to room temperature before making bread, which takes several hours to do.
When you are ready to make the bread add:
1 teaspoon sea salt
2 Tablespoons butter (optional)
6 Tablespoons honey, agave syrup, or organic cane sugar (is using sugar add an extra 2 Tablespoons water)
2 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast
Knead this all in the bowl of stand mixer using the bread hook for about 6 – 8 minutes. Wait until your dough has been kneading about 4-5 minutes before adding more water or flour to get the right texture. Your dough should be “tacky but not sticky” according to Peter.
Let the dough rest for 5 minutes.
Knead it again for 1 minute.
Check the final dough by taking a small piece of dough and stretching it out to perform a “windowpane test”. Your dough should be elastic enough to stretch, creating a window you can see light through without tearing.
Shape the dough into a ball and return it to the bowl. Cover the bowl with a tea towel and leave it to rise in a draft-free place until you can poke your finger into the dough and the indentation from your finger does not fill in. I let me dough rise in the oven with the light on for some warmth. You can also let it rise on the counter but it may take longer. Mine takes about 1 1/2 hours for the first rise but my house is about 66 degrees. If this takes too long for you try doubling the amount of yeast – but remember that virtually all yeast is GMO so I try to minimize my use of it.
After the first rise you can shape your loaves then cover them with the tea towel and let them rise again, about 45 minutes to 75 minutes this time. Keep in mind they will rise slightly during the baking.
With experience you’ll figure out how high they should look in your pans before baking. If you get bread with large holes in the top you know you let them rise too long. If the crumb is dense you did not let them rise long enough. You may end up with several loaves that you save to make breadcrumbs, bread pudding or croutons out of but the experience you are gaining is immeasurable.
If you do happen to let the bread rise too long you can take a serrated knife and slash the tops before baking to keep them from rising up more.
Bake your bread in a 350 F degree oven for about 40 minutes, until they are deep brown and sound hollow on the bottom when thumped. An instant read thermometer inserted into the bottom of the loaf should read 185 – 190 farenheit.
Remove the loaves from the pans and place them on a wire rack to cool completely before you slice them.
Homemade bread will last for several days before it might start to mold so be sure to pre-slice and freeze any bread you don’t plan on eating in that time frame. You can pop it in the toaster to thaw and/or toast it when you want it.
Now you know how to make amazing whole wheat bread that everyone will LOVE.
11 responses so far ↓
1 Bread Shaping // Dec 27, 2009 at 12:56 am
[...] I’ve been meaning to add this post forever! Here is how I shape my bread. [...]
2 Saving Money by Eating Locally // Jan 10, 2010 at 2:56 pm
[...] in. If you work consider buying a bread machine and crock pot. Peruse my category list for pancake, bread and other baked good recipes and quit buying pancake mix since you already have everything in your [...]
3 Emily // Jan 19, 2010 at 1:35 am
I sure have been enjoying your blog. We live in Fairbanks Alaska and it is a little more challenging to eat locally but we try. We raise ducks, chickens, turkeys and dairy goats. We buy most our meat locally and grow a large garden. I’ve been researching grain grinders for a while now and still have not decided which one to buy. I haven’t found too many people who use theirs regularly and have a strong preference. So I’m wondering what you use, how you like it and whether you’d buy the same grinder again? Recently I’ve been making more bread using a majority of white flour because I can’t get my husband and kids to eat bread with mostly wheat flour. But you’ve inspired me to try your sandwich bread. I’ve always been intrigued by the Laurel’s Kitchen Desem bread, so now I might have to try that as well. On a side note, I made english muffins this week, and when I was reading your last post, I noted that we must have been thinking alike. I have been making kombucha, kefir and various lacto fermented foods so when I read about your ginger bug I had to start one of those as well. I’ve been combining Kombucha with fruit juice and ginger in an attempt to make a product similar to a bottle I purchased. I think the ginger bug may be just what it needs to add a bit more sparkle. Thanks for the inspiration. I look forward to your posts. Emily wildrootshomestead.blogspot.com
4 admin // Jan 19, 2010 at 2:56 am
Hi Emily, how cool that you are able to have dairy goats and poultry! You must feel so self-sufficient. I think poultry and backyard dairy are about as sustainable as you can get.
Here is my grinder post: http://www.sustainableeats.com/2009/02/02/the-grain-mill/ but before you buy anything I would buy whole wheat bread flour and whole wheat pastry flour and experiment with those. That way if your family just won’t accept what you make with them you won’t be out any money.
I think they key to getting them used to whole wheat is to use more sweetener in the beginning. You can even use this bread and roll it out, fill with brown sugar & cinnamon and then roll back up and bake as cinnamon rolls. Cinnamon will make bread dough tougher though but the overnight soak on this bread should help counter that. It’s a very tender loaf so a great transitional one.
The other thing you can do is slowly introduce whole wheat by making this with 50% white bread flour and 50% whole wheat.
Let me know how your ginger kombucha comes out! I like kombucha but when I tried to make it not so much. What I buy at the farmers market is much better for some reason. The ginger bug in apple cider for a few days is really yummy!
5 Dark Days Week 16 // Mar 7, 2010 at 11:48 pm
[...] 100% whole wheat bread using Bluebird grain red winter [...]
6 gloria // May 3, 2010 at 4:17 pm
May I ask what kind of wheat grinder you have and any specifics about it that might help me. Is it stone ground grinder….electric or hand grinder?
7 admin // May 3, 2010 at 10:16 pm
Hi Gloria, here is my post on the grain mill: http://www.sustainableeats.com/2009/02/02/the-grain-mill/
It’s a Family grain mill, also called Jupiter that I got at http://www.everythingkitchens.com. I’m really happy with it! I’ve since gotten the flaker attachment so I can roll oats and spelt flakes too. it’s stone and I have both the electric motor and the hand crank but it could also be hooked up to a bicycle. I use the motor though since with 2 small kids, full time work and a large garden my time is constrained already.
8 Rachel // Jul 8, 2010 at 8:30 am
I just wanted to doublecheck that the amounts of flour and liquid in this recipe are correct? I followed the recipe exactly but both the soaker and biga seemed runny. After soaking overnight (24 hours) I mixed the two together and added the rest of the ingredients, but I still had more of a batter than a dough…when I attempted to turn it out on my counter for kneading it ran everywhere and almost dripped onto the floor! I had to add about 3 cups of flour for it to start resembling a dough rather than a batter. What did I do wrong?
9 admin // Jul 8, 2010 at 2:27 pm
Rachel I’m not sure – I make this once or twice a week and if anything I’m probably using less flour than you are. What grind of flour is it? Mine is stone groundish.
You are using 7 cups total flour and 3 cups total liquid, right? Sometimes I end up using an extra 1/2 to 1 cup flour depending on humidity, etc though.
10 Sara // Jul 18, 2010 at 8:27 pm
I’ve been using Peter Reinhart’s recipe for a few months now as it is the best 100% recipe I have found so far, but I would prefer to soak all the flour…did you just divide the final amount between the biga and soaker? I usually weigh my flour, so I can’t really tell where you’ve added it by the measurements.
11 admin // Jul 18, 2010 at 11:15 pm
Sara, I’ve actually adapted the quantities. I don’t weigh my flour and the measurements may be a little off since I grind it fresh so unfortunately I’m probably not able to help you much. I’d love to hear your feedback after you try my version. I initially posted it on the wordpress blog and there are pages of rave reviews for it there.
Leave a Comment