Mom’s Bread

 I grew up on 100% whole wheat bread and continue to make it weekly for my (non-gluten-free) family. The GF kid gets GF bread that tastes like sadness. 

Some people are scared of making bread. I get it. The recipes can seem daunting. But I'm here to beginner-proof your bread errors.  There are really only three places you can mess up. 

1. Water to flour ratio. 

2.  Forgetting the salt. 

3. Under-proofing. 

Here's a video and more instructions below if you want words. You old person, you. Also, you can absolutely do this in a bowl and hand mix. All of the same rules apply except for a 5 minute machine kneed, do ten minutes. Call it your arm workout. Let rest 1 hour and kneed again for 5 before shaping. 

Recipe 

1/4 c yeast

1/4 c oil

1/4 c honey

1.5 c warm water (110F-ish. Don't kill the yeast!)

Let that sit in your bowl for a bit until the yeastie beastie's are bubbling. 

Then add enough whole wheat flour (or white or a mix of the two, I'm not here to judge) that when you turn the mixer on, it's not gonna slosh all over the place. 

Add 

1/3 c milk powder or some actual milk, or I like to add whey because we make yogurt, too and it's sort of a left over but actually REALLY helps out the texture of whole wheat bread because whey is an emulsifier..anyway...

AND TWO TABLESPOONS OF SALT. 

If you forget the salt, you're gonna be sad for like, four entire loaves-worth of bread. Salt is important. 

4 C warm water (total of 5.5 C in case you're bad at kitchen math)

Lots of flour. 

How much flour? It depends on so many things. 

The humidity of the day, how warm it is, how fresh your flour is, the type of flour. Seriously. There's no way to know. Don't even try. 

JUST MEASURE THE WATER AND THE BREAD WILL TURN OUT. I PROMISE. It's like, grandma-bread-baking-magic. Or maybe voodoo. Possibly even science. I don't know WHY it works, it just does. Trust the magic.