Perfect (well, in my opinion anyway) Whole Wheat Bread

Okay, brace yourselves, this is a really long bread post but it's been a longggggg time coming.

I've been working hard to perfect whole wheat bread from scratch. I've tried several recipes and then landed on one from my friend, Katey, who really should be co-authoring this blog by now! Sorry, where was I? Oh yes, bread. So, I took her bread recipe which is fabulous by the way just the way it is but I've been picky lately about bread. I want it to be moist and string together like store bought bread. When it's 5 days old, I don't want to make a sandwich and have the bread falling apart in crumbs. So began my experiments with bread science. Basically this was my method:

Katey's bread recipe + Tammy's husband's bread science = amazing whole wheat bread
See, simple math!

Okay, so here's my concoction that I simply adore!

2 1/2 cups warm water (not hot!)
6 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
2/3 cup honey
1 tsp lecithin
6 tbsp gluten
1/4 tsp ginger
1 tbsp yeast

Mix the water, 2 1/2 cups of the flour, salt, oil, honey, lecithin, gluten, and ginger and mix together. Then mix in the yeast. Add remaining flour (plus more or less as needed) until you have a nice bread dough. Knead and let rise for 40 min. in a warm place (I spray a glass/metal bowl with olive oil and cover with a light kitchen towel). Punch down and form into 2 loaves. Place loaves in loaf pans that have been greased with butter. Let rise for 1 hour. Bake at 350 degrees for about 30-35 minutes.

Take it out of the oven and DO NOT CUT IT no matter how tempting it is, and believe me, I KNOW how tempting it is. The bread actually continues to cook while cooking in the hot loaf pan. Let it cool until it's completely cool. Then remove it from the loaf pan.

(In the picture, my loaves are poked with fork holes but I've done them without those and instead put a slice down the center right before they go in the oven and that works well too. Either way is fine.)

Okay, let's go back to the three strange ingredients listed... lecithin, gluten, and ginger. This is where Tammy's husband's bread science comes in. These three ingredients are dough conditioners that create the softness and stringiness in bread. How do I describe it? Instead of crumbly dry homemade bread, you get extra soft bread like the store. Now, let me pause and say that Katey's recipe is incredibly soft to start with and wonderful so this is no slight on her recipe! Trust me, it's great the way it is...but I've just been extra picky about my bread lately. You can make the recipe WITHOUT these three ingredients just fine and you can see below for Katey's original recipe. BUT, if you do add these three ingredients it makes the bread amazingly soft.Some more doughy thoughts:
-this bread makes excellent dinner rolls as well.
-to make fluffy rolls substitute some of the whole wheat flour for white flour.
-this bread makes wonderful french toast!
-I use very fine flour so the texture may differ depending on the flour used. Do NOT use pastry flour, remember, that's only for non-yeast recipes. Depending on your flour you may need to add less or more flour to the dough recipe.
-you can make this recipe in your bread machine, which I've done but you have to half it and it doesn't come out as well.

Here is the bread machine measurements for one loaf. (keep in mind that this doesn't come out as moist in the bread machine but if you are a bit busy it might be nice to at least run this through the dough cycle.

BREAD MACHINE for 1 loaf:
1 1/4 c warm water
1/2 c honey
1/4 c extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp lecithin
3 tbsp gluten
1/8 tsp ginger
3 c flour
1/2 tbsp yeast

Place all ingredients into bread machine in the order listed. Make a small dent in the flour to put the yeast in. Turn on bread machine on whole wheat bread setting for a light loaf, and the smallest loaf it will make (either 1 lb. or 1 1/2 lb.)

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is Katey's original recipe....which is awesomely easy if you are in a hurry. I love her recipe! Thanks Katey! (note* my recipe has more honey cause I'm a sucker for sweet tasting bread but not everyone likes their bread that sweet so try Katey's amount if you'd like to have less honey.)

Standard Bread Dough
. 2 1/2 cups of Warm Water
. 2 cups of whole Wheat Flour
. 1 teaspoons of Salt
. 1/2 cup of Oil
. 1/2 cup of Honey
. 1 tablespoon of Yeast

Add the Water, Flour, Salt, Oil and Honey and mix together. Then mix in the
yeast. Add flour until you have a nice dough (4 or 5 more cups). Knead and
let rise for 30 to 40 minutes in a warm place. Punch down and form into
loaves. Place in greased loaf pans and use a fork to poke several holes into
dough. Let rise again for about an hour. Bake at 350 degrees for about 30
minutes, or until lightly golden brown.