Whole-Grain Wheat Bread

Whole-Grain Wheat Bread 

This bread is 100% whole grain and very tasty as well as full of nutrients. Store-bought whole-wheat bread is mostly white flour with a modest amount of the whole grain. To get the complete whole grain, you may have to mill the grain yourself. First select the wheat. I use red wheat.

I find the best way to acquire the red wheat is in
45 lb. buckets that cost about 25 US dollars per bucket. Given the national  interest in emergency or "prepper" food supplies, these buckets are easy to find online or locally in many communities. I get mine from a "big box" local grocery store. I have a hand wheat grinder and an electric grinder. You have to be very hungry to use a hand grinder. The hand grinder will work in emergencies when the electricity has failed.

Ingredients

This will make two loaves.

A very basic bread recipe uses warm water,  yeast, and flour. To be more tasty, add some salt,  sweetener, and oil or butter. See the reference to "damper" at the end of this post.

I use:

4 cups of hot water, not boiling. I take it from the hot faucet in the kitchen sink. You need the warm water to make the yeast work. Boiling water poured on the yeast will kill live, active yeast. Ensuring a warm temperature for the yeast when Grandma Hofmeister was cooking was not a major concern in the Queensland Outback. If it was 105 degrees F. outside and the kitchen stove was burning wood, the temperature was great for keeping the yeast active.

1/2 cup of olive oil for the bread mixture, 1 tablespoon for rubbing the inside of each of the two baking pans, and 2 tablespoons for basting the crust of each of loaf of bread after it is cooked.

For the sweetener  I use a 1/4 cup of honey and a 1/4 cup of molasses, mixed.

1 tablespoon of sea salt

8 cups of whole-grain flour.

2 dry active-yeast packets. These sealed packets contain a tablespoon each. Using these sealed packets usually means the yeast is alive and active. When time is an issue the outback australians used self-raising ("self-rising" in Australian) flour. See damper recipes below.

Take the bowl off the mixer and include every ingredient except the flour and yeast. Stir with a large spoon. Add half the flour (about four cups). Place the bowl on the mixer and gently stir until the hot water is well mixed. Then add the yeast and keep mixing slowly. This will be a very sticky mixture. You need to add more flour slowly, about a half cup at a time. Stop adding flour and stop mixing when the mixture stops sticking to the mixing bowl. There should be very little flour left.

Take the mixing bowl off the mixer and cover with a paper towel and a small cutting board to hold the paper towel in place. Let the mixture rise for 45 minutes. The dough should have risen noticeably.

Place the bowl back on the mixer and mix slowly for about a minute. This should reduce the mixture. Remove the bowl from the mixer and place the dough on a whole-grain, flour-covered cutting board. Knead the mixture into a roll and cut into halves. Knead each half for a few minutes and place in a baking pan which has been rubbed inside with olive oil to prevent loaves from sticking to the pans.

Preheat your oven to 400, set back to 350 and cook the loaves for 35 to 40 minutes.

Remove loaves from the oven and baste the top of each loaf with olive oil. This will ensure the loaves do not develop a heavy dry crust that will limit sandwich making.

Immediately remove the loaves from the pans and set them out for at least 30 minutes before eating. After 60 minutes you may wrap each loaf with foil and store in a cool place, but not in a refrigerator. The refrigerator will change the texture. The loaves will dry out quickly if not wrapped in foil or waxed paper. Remember there are no artifical preservatives in these loaves, so enjoy the bread within a day or two. The bread is still quite tasty for a week if kept well wrapped in foil.

Some Great Additions - Apples and Raisins

If you wish to vary the basic recipe listed above, there are two great tasty and healthy additions, apples and raisins.  I prefer to add three cups of my bottled cinnamon apples for each loaf. Some will peel and chop the raw apples and add three cups of chopped apples and 3 teaspoons of cinnamon per loaf. To make the raisin loaves, add three cups of raisins per loaf. I like to soak my raisins in dark rum overnight. This is still a healthy addition. The alcohol evaporates during the cooking, but the great rum taste does not. These additions are included in the basic mixture before the yeast is added.

Damper - The Outback Bread

The Aussie-info web site Noted:

In colonial Australia, stockmen developed the technique of making damper out of necessity. Often away from home for weeks with just a camp fire to cook on and only sacks of flour as provisions, a basic staple bread evolved. It was originally made with flour and water and a good pinch of salt, kneaded, shaped into a round, and baked in the ashes of the campfire or open fireplace. It was eaten with pieces of fried, dried meat, sometimes spread with golden syrup, but always with billy tea or maybe a swig of rum.

Today it is made with milk and self-rising flour. Salt is optional.

BUSH DAMPER

3 cups of self-rising flour
1/2 teaspoon salt (optional)
3 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup water

Sift flour and salt into a bowl, rub in butter until mixture resembles fine crumbs.
Make a well in the centre, add the combined milk and water, mix lightly with a knife until dough leaves sides of bowl.
Gently knead on a lightly floured surface, and then shape into a round and place on a greased oven tray. Pat into a round 15-16 cm (6-6 1/2 inch) diameter.
With sharp knife, cut two slits across dough like a cross, approximately 1cm (1/2in) deep.
Brush top of dough with milk.
Sift a little extra flour over dough.
Bake in a hot oven for 10 minutes, or until golden brown.
Reduce heat to moderate and bake another 20 minutes.
Best eaten the day it is made.

Baking Bread in Tough Times

Given that we started with a reference to emergency food preparation, all the above-listed suggestions for bread making can be done without the typical home oven, be it gas or electric. You will need a 12-inch Dutch Oven (in Australia we call them Camp Ovens). The 12-inch Dutch Oven is the perfect fit  for the standard bread loaf pan.

The following photo from www.aussiecampovencook.com says it all. If you use a smaller 8-inch Dutch Oven then the Dutch Oven would serve as both the loaf pan and the oven.

Part 2 is the next post - What to do with old dry bread?