I've been asked several times in the past few weeks if I stopped eating bread to lose weight. Um, NO. In fact, carbs are a pretty freaking important part of my diet. I eat bread, pasta, and all that other fun stuff. BUT we eat whole wheat, and in the case of bread we eat homemade. Want a bit of a scare? Go grab your store-bought loaf of bread and read the ingredients. Yeah. YUM! Or not . . .
We've been making our own bread for several years. Our bread machine broke a long time ago, and then we just started making it by hand. Honestly, by hand is even better than the bread machine.
So, here's our recipe for Homemade Wheat Bread-modified from a recipe my dad gave us forever ago:
1.75 c wheat flour
1.75 c white flour
2 tsp sugar
one packet or 2 tsp of yeast
1 1/3 c warm water.
Mix dry ingredients, dig a hole in the center and add yeast. Add water, stir. You may need to add a small additional amount of water while mixing. Stir a minimum of 30 strokes in each direction, then kneed dough on a floured surface for 8-10 minutes, until smooth and elastic. Place in a lightly oiled, floured pan, cover with a damp towel and let rise for 45 min - 1 hour. Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, then remove immediately from pan.
In the future, I hope to start incorportating at least a partial amount of freshly ground wheat flour into our breads. As soon as wheat is ground into flour, it starts losing a great deal of its essential vitamins and minerals. By grinding your own wheat and incorporating it into your bread, you get the full nutritional value of the wheat. Here's an article on that: http://hubpages.com/hub/Grind-flour
We haven't gotten around to doing this yet, but Whole Foods carries wheat, so I'm hoping to buy a few pounds and try it soon. In the mean time, I've been grinding up oats and throwing them .5 cup of oat flour in for some of the white flour.
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