Saturday, May 9, 2015

Hearty Wheat Bread

So I looked at a few different bread recipes, decided I liked bits and pieces of all of them, and then proceeded to basically make up my own recipe. I was very pleased with how well this turned out! Unfortunately we don't have a wheat grinder, because grinding your own wheat for this could only make it better!

The Ingredients:
1/2 cup of 9-grain cereal
1.5 tsp yeast and 1/2 cup of warm water
2 Tbs flax seeds
2 Tbs chia seeds
2 cups bread flour
2 cups wheat flour
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
1/4 cup olive oil
2 Tbs honey
1/2 cup-ish ofquick-oats

What I did:
Soak the 9-grain cereal is warm water about 30 minutes
Soak the flax seeds and chia seeds together in water for about 30 minutes
Put the yeast in the 1/2 cup of warm (hottish) water and allow to proof about 15 minutes
Combine the bread flour, wheat flour, and salt and mix together.
(I did this in my kitchen-aid, and it was super easy!)
Make a well in the mixture of dry ingredients and add in the eggs, olive oil, yeast mixture, flax and chia seed mixture, 9-grain cereal, and the honey. Mix all of this well and knead until the dough starts to form a bowl and doesn't stick to the sides of the bowl.
(P.S. The chia and flax seed mixture will be a little slimy and thick. It's totally fine, that's just the seeds soaking up the water!)
As the dough was kneading I ended up adding about 1/3 cup extra of wheat flour, so if you need more flour, just add as much as you need.
Once it has come together, form a ball with the dough. Oil and large bowl and place the dough ball in. Cover and let rise for an hour in a WARM place! (This is very important. My apartment was too cold and it didn't rise properly for the first hour. I got it warmer for the second rising and it was totally fine.)
After rising, take dough out and divide it into two equal parts. Shape into loaves and put in oiled bread pans. Allow to rise for an hour in a warm place.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees fahrenheit.
Brush loaves with olive oil. (You could brush them with butter, a mixture of butter and olive oil, if you want something sweeter, you could brush them with honey butter. Lots of choices here. I personally would do butter olive oil if you can get your hands on it. It's absolutely amazing!)
Sprinkle quick-oats on the outside of the loaf.
Bake for 25-35 minutes.

There you have it! This turned out really well for me. It's made great sandwich bread! Let me know what you think, though. If you have any suggestions for improvement, please let me know that as well!

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