Minutes to bake: 25
Makes 3 to 4 loaves, depending on your size-of-loaf preference
½ cup water
¼ cup (85 gm) honey
¼ cup molasses
30 gm yeast
3 eggs
30 gm gluten
210 gm unbleached white flour
160 gm oatmeal
12 gm salt
2 cups warm water
730 gm whole wheat flour
Heat ½ cup water, honey, and molasses until warm (100-110 degrees F or 38-43 degrees C). Mix in yeast and let sit several minutes to let sponge form.
In bread mixer beat eggs with wire beater. Add yeast, gluten, and white flour. Mix at speed 1 until a bit combined, then mix at speed 3 for three minutes. Scrape bowl as needed. Mix in oats and salt and mix well at speed 3. Add warm water and mix well on speed 1.
Switch to dough hook. Add about 2 cups whole wheat flour. Mix at speed 1 until flour is pretty much mixed in, then at speed 2 or 3 for three minutes.
Add remaining flour, about ½-1 cup at a time, mixing three minutes on speed 2 or 3 after each addition, until dough is smooth and forms a ball (add a little whole wheat flour, if needed, but try mixing longer first—if you add too much flour, the bread gets dry). Mix at least two more minutes for adequate kneading time. Dough should be smooth and elastic.
Let raise in the bowl until doubled, about one hour (sometimes as quickly as a half hour). Punch down and repeat. Punch down and form four loaves (about 500 gm each). Place in greased loaf pans, cover with damp towel and let raise until doubled. Bake in hot oven (375 degrees F or 190 degrees C) for 25 - 30 minutes.
NOTES: My bread mixer has only 3 speeds, so 1 is low and 3 is high. Your bread mixer may be different, so adjust accordingly. It's important to switch to dough hooks when indicated. I forgot once and almost burned out my motor. Seriously. I could smell the burnt smell.
If no bread mixer, use any mixer until you get to the dough hook part. At that point you either need a mixer with
a dough hook or your need to mix by hand like my grandma did. And my mother. And me, actually.
There is no oil or fat in this recipe, so it might not raise as high as a recipe with fat. You could add a little (eg, butter, oil, lard, or shortening). I forgot it once and never missed it, so I just quit including it.
This bread is NOT light and fluffy. It has substance. It's wonderful, fresh from the oven, only cooled off enough to handle. It freezes well in an airtight wrapping--like plastic wrap made for freezing stuff, so make four loaves and freeze three. Take them out as you need them.
Thanks V, good to know it’s not a light and fluffy bread..I always use a bread machine as my arthritis does me joints in.
Know any good white sourdough recipes?
Alas! I do not. It has surely been at least 20 or possibly even 30 years since I made anything sourdough. And I don't seem to have any recipes left from that era. I can't recall that it was especially good, anyway.
I do have recipes for many delicious things, like zucchini bread, Greek yogurt pancakes, honey cornbread, pizza crust (I do put toppings on it, breakfast bran muffins, graham crackers....
Well I’ll post a sourdough recipe here, along with the Baguettes, What are graham crackers?
The British don't have graham crackers. You have "digestive biscuits", which probably come closest, but they aren't the same. It's just that they are the closest think you have to "crackers", I think. This link (https://topwithcinnamon.com/graham-crackers/) gives a pretty good description of the difference, as well as what graham crackers really are. Most people buy them. It's unusual to make them, but I like to know what's in mine. Especially to know there is no refined sugar, just honey.
Very interesting, i did make chocolate digestive biscuits with raisins in...inspired by cadbury fruit and nut bars..very nice but full of sugar
We call those cookies. And I have a great recipe for something called "ranger cookies". But I didn't develop that recipe. I got it from Betty Crocker. It can have raisins or chocolate chips or both. And it has lots of good stuff like coconut, Wheaties, and I can't remember what all. Haven't made them for a while. They have sugar in them and these days I can feel it when I eat sugar. Painful. So I tend to avoid it. I wonder how they would work with honey?? I might have to try that.
I remember cookies from the Hannah Barbera cartoons, top cat, tom and jerry etc.
I remember a Tom & Jerry cartoon from when I was very small. This was before 1955 sometime, probably 1953 or 1954. I remember the mouse "running" under carpet, and you could see the lump running around. The cat was chasing it, of course.