Whole Wheat Bread

Filling your home with the smell of fresh baked bread is simply wonderful.  This recipe makes three hearty and flavourful loaves.  If you are pressed for time, you can skip the sponge stage, but the bread won’t taste quite as good, or develop quite as much texture.  It’s best to choose a day to make this when you will be home most of the day, and dinner doesn’t need to be baked.  Humid summer days really speed up the rising times, but having the oven on may not be ideal. The density of whole wheat flour is quite variable, so it is hard to specify exactly how much you’ll need.

This bread will keep for about 10 days, but you might want to freeze one loaf so that it doesn’t dry out too much in the winter, or go mouldy in the summer.  I’ve never got the point of baking one loaf at a time, or the assumption that day old bread isn’t edible.  Some bread that is very low in fat will dry out quickly and taste stale, but this recipe includes enough fat for the bread to stay fresh for a fairly long time.  It won’t be great for sandwiches after a week of sitting out, but it will still make great toast.

¼ cup butter

1 cup milk

¼ cup molasses

2 tsp salt

1 cup cold water

1 cup lukewarm water (about 70 ^oF)

1 tsp sugar or honey

1 heaped tbsp of active dry yeast (not the instant kind)

5-8 cups hard whole wheat flour

Place the butter, milk, molasses and salt in a small pot and heat until butter melts.  Stir in the cup of cold water and set aside to cool.

Mix the sugar/honey into the warm water in a large bowl.  Sprinkle yeast over surface, and let sit for about 10 minutes, until it’s foamy.

Check the contents of the pot to make sure they are not too hot - otherwise adding it will kill the yeast.  When it’s ready, add the pot contents to the big bowl.

Stir in 1 cup of flour at a time, until the mixture has the texture of thick mud.  This usually takes about 2 and half cups of flour.  Cover with a damp tea towel, and let sit in a warm place that is free of drafts.  I usually put it in the oven.  If it’s cold in the house, I turn on the oven light for a bit to make it warm in there.  This is called letting it sponge.  Leave it at least 2 hours, but not more than 24.

Stir in more flour until using a spoon doesn’t work.  Turn the dough out onto a floured surface, and knead in more flour until it has the right texture - not too sticky, and yields to pressure about like belly fat does.  Kneading usually takes about ten minutes.

Wash the bowl, dry it, and butter it with your hands.  Use your hands to rub a bit of butter all over the dough.  Cover it with a damp tea towel, and let rise in a warm place with no drafts until it has doubled in size, usually 1-2 hours.

Knead the dough through ten times, and divide it into three loaves.  Cover it with the towel and let the dough rest while you prepare the pans.  Butter the pans with your fingers, being sure to get right into the corners as well as over the tops and down the sides a bit, so that as the dough rises over the top of the pans it won’t stick.  Press the dough into the pans, and cover with the towel again, re-dampening it if necessary.  Let rise until doubled, up over the tops of the pans, usually 1-2 hours.

Preheat oven to 400^oF.  Bake for 30 minutes.  Loaves will sound hollow when tapped on the bottom when they are done.  Remove loaves from pans, and cool on a wire rack.