You never know what’s in the bread that you buy at the store. I might just be me, but we used to just grab whatever looked “good” and settle with that. But then I found an amazing website called Food Facts. In a nutshell, Food Facts tells you what ingredients are in certain products (such as dough conditioners), what those ingredients are made of, and give the overall product a grade.
Foodfacts is the largest and most comprehensive internet source for nutrition facts (browse this site to meet the experts of this field), ingredient information, allergens, controversial ingredients and everything else that a conscientious consumer needs to know.
The item I will be comparing the homemade whole wheat bread to is Captain John Derst’s 100% Whole Wheat Sliced Bread. It’s a very commonly purchased brand of bread and although their “whole wheat version” appears to be healthy, that’s not entirely true. They add things like MSG hidden behind the name of yeast nutrients and it seems okay to the consumer because it says “No MSG except for that which naturally occur in yeast nutrients”.
Each of these ingredients opens up a pop-up with the ingredients information in case you don’t know much about it. Also, I wanted to point out that this product has a whopping 19 ingredients while the recipe for whole wheat bread below only has a mere 7 ingredients. Yeah, I don’t plan on consuming Ethoxylated Mono and Diglycerides.
About this recipe:
This whole wheat bread is indeed vegan. If you don’t care if it is vegan, but don’t want to use sugar, honey is a great alternative. In fact, it’s what I use most of the time. But when I do use sugar, I use pure cane sugar that has not been bleached.
This recipe takes a lot less time to prepare than other bread recipes and is not at all tough or dense. If I start it at 9:00 AM, it’ll be cooled and ready to cut at noon. Yep, it’s absolutely the easiest bread recipe I’ve tried this far. And believe me when I tell you that I have tried most of the whole wheat bread recipes out there. None have risen as high or taken as little time to rise. I’m telling you, this recipe is the one for you.
Here’s the recipe:
- 3 cups lukewarm water
- 1½ tablespoons yeast
- 3 tablespoons of sugar or honey
- ⅓ cup oil
- 2½ tsp. salt
- 3 cups unbleached all-purpose or bread flour
- 4 to 6 cups white whole wheat flour
- In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast and sugar in the warm water. Let the yeast sit for 10 minutes. Add the oil, salt, white flour, and 4 cups of the wheat flour.
- Knead all ingredients for 6-8 minutes, adding additional wheat flour in small amounts as needed. The dough should be smooth, elastic, and slightly sticky, pulling away from the sides of the bowl.
- Cover it , and let it rise until doubled. This should only take about 25 minutes.
- Punch it down, and form into 2 loaves (cut dough in half, roll into a rectangle, roll up jelly roll style and tuck ends under). Place the loaves into 2 greased 9" bread pans, cover again, and let rise until the bread is a little smaller than the size you want the final product to be. While the loaves rise, pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.
- When the loaves have fully raised, bake them for 25 minutes. Remove the loaves from the pans onto a cooling rack. Let cool for 30 minutes to an hour.
This looks like a wonderful recipe, and I will definitely try it! Your picture is very beautiful!
You’ll be surprised at how little time it takes to make it, not to mention how easy it is. Call me if you need any help. Love you!
The bread is sooo good! It was very easy to make. The recipe is definitely a keeper.