Whole-wheat bread machine bread
9:23 AM - November 14, 2005
For most of us of European descent, bread is life. It is a delicious way to bake grains into a form that is easily carried. It has sustained us for generations and each culture has adapted the basic bread to meet both its needs and tastes.
Somewhere in our increasingly industrialized society the art of baking bread at home has been lost. I remember my mother saying that it was simply too much work. We have come to rely on store bought breads that have little taste or nutritional value.
In a recent email from my Aunt (my father's sister) she said this about my great-grandmother's bread:
and delicious, not marginally
tasteless and super soft like the
bread you buy in the store today,
some of which is so loaded with
preservative it can sit in a bread
drawer, open, for a month or more
in the summer heat and humidity
and not mold....a true experience,
and when I found it so 'fresh'
after a summer vacation I threw it
out and never bought that brand
again. Grandma lived to be 94 or
95.
I am doing a little research into my genealogy as well as different aspects of making breads from yeast starters. I am also researching stollen and who knows I might have the recipe and research posted before Christmas. In the meantime I wanted to add a recipe of my own for whole wheat bread using a bread-maker.
I personally adapted this recipe from one listed on the back of a "Bob's Red Mill" flour package. I added backstrap molasses and flax meal. This type of stone ground flour can be found in the health food/organic section of your local supermarket. The gluten can be found in the same section.
I credit my love of bread machine bread to my mother-in-law who almost never buys a loaf of bread and always has fresh bread made when we come to visit. I hope those of you who have a bread-maker will enjoy this recipe!
1-1/2 Cups & 1 Tbsp of water
3-3/4 Cups of Whole-wheat flour
2 Tbsp Dry Milk powder
1-1/2 tsp of salt
1 Tbsp of Canola oil
3 Tbsp of sugar (4Tbsp for a sweeter bread)
1-1/2 Tbsp of Gluten
1 Tbsp of Backstrap Molasses
3 Tsp of Active Dry Yeast (1-packet)
3 Tbsp of flaxseed meal
Combine the ingredients based on the recommendations of your bread machine manufacturer. For our bread machine it works better to put the water (lukewarm) in first and then the yeast, followed by the flour. This recipe has iron from the Molasses and Omega-3 fatty acids from the flax meal. It is low in bad fats and cholesterol and high in "good" fats.
If you don't want to use flaxmeal you can substitute 1 extra Tbsp of Canola oil. It is a nice, moist bread and I like to slice it hot and wrap it in plastic wrap to keep it fresh.
