My Bread Recipe

I finally had time to bake bread properly on Saturday morning, and I thought I would share my recipe with you. (Plus, if I go a long, long time before making bread again sometime in the future, it would be handy to have the recipe here to refer to. :) )

Supermom's Family-Favorite Honey Whole Wheat Bread

In Bosch mixer combine:

6 cups warm milk (not too hot! You don't want to kill the yeast) (also, if you're low in milk, you can use part milk and part water)

6 Tablespoons baking yeast

3 Tablespoons lecithin

1-and-a-half sticks of butter, sliced

1 cup of honey

1.5 Tablespoons sea salt

Plus freshly ground whole wheat flour. (I use a Whisper Mill) Basically, I grind 8 cups of wheat into flour and pour all of that into the Bosch. Then I grind 8 more cups of wheat, but just add it roughly by the cupful as the mixer goes round and round. You only want to add enough flour to get to the point where the dough comes away from the sides of the mixer bowl cleanly. (the extra flour is used making pancake mix)

Leave the cover on and let the mixer do it's thing for 10 minutes. (electronic kneading!!)

Though this recipe was originally given to me for 6 loaves, I find that it works better for us to make it into 5. So, just grab blobs of dough and try to distribute it evenly between 5 loaf pans that have been sprayed with no-stick spray. Lovingly pat the dough into shape, and then cover all of it with a tea towel and leave it alone to rise for a half hour.

I leave the loaves on the stove top for the rising, because about 15 minutes into the rise time I start pre-heating the oven. I think that the heat that radiates up to the stove top helps it rise better.

Preheat the oven to 325 or so. (350 is too much, but if you have a fancy-shmancy oven that allows you to be even more precise than 25-degree increments, I would not be surprised if you find that 330 or 340 degrees works even better).

After the half hour of rising you just need to uncover your bread and pop it into your oven. Bake for 22 minutes. (Seriously. Not 20. Not 25. 22. Or at least, that's what brings about bread perfection in MY oven. Yours may be different.)

My family loves this bread so much that I try to plan for it to come out of the oven about 15 minutes or so before lunch time. They will gladly eat some fresh bread with butter, honey, jam, or peanut butter for lunch. :)