I’ve had a lot of questions about bread since I posted a conversation about how to judge the “poorganic-ness” of your bread. It includes information about homemade and store bought breads. I HAVE been trying to make bread more often, and now that I’ve incorporated it into my week, it isn’t as much of a hassle. I do have a bread machine that I use for the mixing and rising, but it is old and bakes into a hard brick lump, so I don’t use the bread machine for that part.
This recipe is one I’ve adapted and had great success using as sandwich bread. Click the title to print the recipe.
Poorganic Honey Whole Wheat Bread
Ingredients
3 ¼ cups white whole wheat flour
1/8 cup vital wheat gluten (if you don’t have this, you could use all purpose flour and a crushed Vitamin C tablet)
1 ½ Tbsp raw honey
1 ½ Tbsp butter
1 ½ Tbsp milk powder or whey (from off your yogurt)
1 ½ tsp salt
1 3/8 cup warm water (110-115 degrees)
2 tsp yeast
Optional Soaking your flour: If you want to try soaking your flour, combine the flours, 1 cup of the water, and the whey, 12 to 24 hours before making the bread. It will make kind of a gunky thick dough. After 12-24 hours, proceed with the normal instructions. I am new to soaking, but I will say the bread did turn out VERY well.
With a breadmaker: Place ingredients in bread maker in the order directed by the manufacturer. Select the dough cyle. (Watch to make sure that you don’t need to throw in a tablespoon or two more flour to keep it from being sticky.) 
By hand: Mix dry ingredients except for yeast. Proof the yeast in the water and then add the other liquids. Add flours gradually, mixing until dough comes into a ball. Knead for 5-10 minutes, adding the minimum amount of flour to keep from sticking. Allow to rise in a greased or floured bowl until double. Then punch down, adding a little flour if sticky.
Second Rise: After the first rise, place in a greased loaf pan for a second rise. I let mine sit on the oven for about an hour while it preheats to 350. (I know this wastes heat, but in the winter, I allow it. J. In the summer, just place the loaf pan on the steaming hot back porch table.)
Baking: Make a tent of foil and place over bread for 20 minutes of baking. Remove foil for final 10 minutes of baking.
Cooling and cutting: The bread should be golden brown when you remove it and make a slightly hollow sound when thumped. After removing the bread from the oven, spread 2 Tbs butter over the crust to prevent it from being too crusty. As soon as you can, loosen the bread from the loaf pan, and transfer to a cooling rack for 4 HOURS. Torture yourself by not cutting into the bread until then. Slice with an electric knife. (If you try to cut the bread too soon, it will tear and crumb everywhere.)
After slicing, keep the number of slices you need for each day in the cupboard. Put in a plastic bag or plastic wrap and freeze the remaining slices. Remove and thaw when you need them. Because this bread doesn’t have preservatives, it doesn’t last in your cupboard for more than three days.
Let me know what you think. Also, making bread is kind of finicky, so don’t give up if your first or fourth loaf turns out differently. Just stick with it. 🙂
I’m linking up this recipe with a bunch of other yummy ones at Comfy in the Kitchen!
WOW, your bread rose HUGE! Ok, I am absolutely going to make this today. I don’t have any honey left, do you think I could sub molasses? I also have Demera sugar if that could work. Also, I don’t have milk powder or whey… I do have whole plain yogurt, what part of it is the whey?
Yes, molasses would be fine. Actually the original version of this recipe calls for molasses. Whey is the liquidy part on top of your yogurt. If you don’t have 1.5 Tbs, just use the actual yogurt. 🙂 The point of the milk powder or the whey is to include milk proteins, which yogurt does quite well. My bread doesn’t always rise that high, but it usually does especially if I proof my yeast correctly.
I am allergic to dairy. What can I substitute for this recipe? I do use soy mile and powered goat milk. Also, I cannot have butter. I can however, have soy margerine.
Sharon
Just use coconut oil for the butter and skip the milk powder and use either whey or nothing.
I haven’t made the jump to raw honey yet, but I’m guessing regular honey would work? Is powdered milk what you mean by milk powder? I’ve really been wanting to try making some bread that would work well for sandwiches. Found the wheat gluten in the grocery store today, so as long as my honey and powdered milk will work I think I’m all set to try the recipe…
Yes, regular honey is fine. Powdered milk is the same as dry milk although I think whey is actually better and better for you.:) It is just the yellow liquidy stuffy on your yogurt.
So, what about soaking your flour like that website mentioned. What do you think of that idea? I did it with bread this week… and it works fine, just takes a lot longer to get a loaf. i suppose i could get on a system and it would be more efficient. Our family eats about 3/4 loaf a day.
Also, my bread machine does the same thing. What’s your brand?
Yeah, I tried the soaked flour and it tasted great. I don’t know if it really tasted “different.” If I think of it, I will probably do it, but mainly I am going to try to focus on soaking GRAINS (rice, oats, and beans) because the flour was a bit of a gloppy mess. The bread machine is Oster and is really old. I gave it to my parents for their 25th anniversary 14 years ago. Since they didn’t use it, I begged it off them. 🙂
I definitely need to try this recipe again. When I was making it this weekend I kind of wondered why sometimes you capitalized the “t” for teaspoon and sometimes you didn’t. I also wondered why I didn’t need to use all the flour the recipe called for. It wasn’t until the bread (which had not risen very well) was in the oven that I was reading over the comments to your blog post with the recipe and realized my mistake…in one of the follow-up comments you mentioned 1 1/2 Tbs. Argh! I then realized that the whey, honey, and butter were all supposed to be tablespoons instead of teaspoons…measuring 1 1/2 teaspoons of butter was a big difficult. I’ve never seen tablespoon abbreviated without a “b” unless it is just “T” instead of “t”. So I only used 1/3 of what I was supposed to of those 3 ingredients.
The good news? It actually tasted pretty good despite my errors–and the whole family liked it ok. I was explaining my mistake at the table and almost 6 year old Nathaniel told me I should make it my why every time because it was good. Imagine how much more he’ll like it when it has triple the honey…
It’s all update now with TBSP instead of Tsp. I don’t know what I was thinking.
I’m out of bread and it’s pouring rain so today is the perfect day to try this recipe. I’ll report back with my sure-to-be success!
I just made it myself. It fell a little, but it is still yummy. Don’t forget to wait four hours before cutting. (Torture though.)
Ugh, that’s what happened to mine, too. It was rising so nicely but then it fell. Any ideas why that happened? Smells good though!
Also, is it really only 30 minutes of baking?
Yes, only 30 minutes. I do 20 with a foil tent over the loaf and 10 with the tent off. I wonder if when I closed the oven after removing the tent, the loaf fell because it looked fine then. Maybe I slammed the door. This has happened before, but inconsistently, so I don’t know what I’m doing to cause it. However, it tastes great. Actually, I subbed molasses for the honey this time and I like the richer flavor. (I know you don’t like molasses, but I don’t think you would taste it in this small quantity.)
I have been following all your directions to a T. However, I looked up today “tips on slicing homemade bread”, and realizing that I have been taking it out of the pan right away, to butter it top and sides… On this tip list, I saw that you’re supposed to leave it in the pan for 5-7 min and that will help soften up the crust. For whatever it’s worth… I still need to get an electric knife though.
I have been making bread regularly the past few weeks. Can I ask why you don’t bake your bread in your breadmaker. I am wondering if I should bake it in the oven like you do. Is this better?
I think I explain in the post above that my bread machine is old and decrepit and the bread always comes out as a hard disgusting briquette. I think the heating coil must be defunct, so it’s only good for the kneading and rising. 🙂 I do like being able to control my second rise time because sometimes it rises more quickly than other times.