Trial and Error: Making Homemade Whole-Wheat Bread

Great Harvest. Honey Whole Wheat Bread. MMMM. Need I say more? Okay, I will! It's made with only five ingredients and no preservatives, and the flour is always fresh ground. It is SOOO tasty and good for you. . .and, alas, SOOO expensive. Because we've been trying to eat more healthily, we thought it was a necessary investment, but with the entire family (except the baby) eating the bread, it was becoming very budget un-friendly!

We started out by weaning our kids (and Justin) off of white bread, and we started buying a certain kind of bread that's available here called "Fiber Bread" to get them more used to a wheat taste. (Justin and Ashley prefer the sprouted wheat variety, but I think it's too dry.) Justin was not a big fan, but it wasn't too bad. We had been trying to make some healthy changes in our diets, and we thought this would be a great place to start. I also started using the whole wheat flour I'd bought with good intentions, but never used. Justin, in his quest for healthier food, discovered IHOP's Harvest Grain 'N' Nut pancakes, and I had to find a copycat recipe so we could start making them at home. My kids complained a bit, but now they gobble them up! I started trying other true whole wheat breads so we could make the bread transition, and, boy, there are some horrible ones out there! I absolutely LOVE Great Harvest Bread, but Justin wasn't sold. Then he finally tried the Great Harvest stuff. It wasn't instant love, but he thought it tasted better than other breads we'd tried. However, the more he ate it, the more he liked it, especially toasted. He even ordered some orange blossom honey on the internet (because, obviously, we don't have it in Utah where there are no orange trees--Justin says it's because we live in an "Artic wasteland") to eat with his toast! It was a comforting ritual. And my kids fell in love with the GH Bread too! We even branched out to the Pumpkin Bread (dude, that stuff is good!!) and other varieties just for fun.

Justin was willing to keep paying for the GH Bread, but I just felt worse and worse about paying over $3.50 a loaf. I started thinking about preparedness and self-reliance and all those wonderful lessons we've had in Enrichment and Relief Society, and I knew the time had come to stop buying Great Harvest bread on a regular basis.

A few years ago, when we lived in Bountiful, a lady named Karen Gilmore, AKA "The Wheat Lady," came to give a presentation on food storage and what we can do to actually use it. Her lessons have been running around in my head, gradually seeping into our lives and mixing with other lessons we've had since, slowly helping us to change and acquire new habits. From these things, I knew I needed to start grinding wheat. I researched wheat grinders and wheat prices, and I got all the ingredients, like honey, dough conditioner/wheat gluten, that I'd need to make our own bread. We still had about 10 lbs of whole wheat flour left, so I put off buying the grinder until we'd used it all up.

I decided to try using our long-neglected breadmaker just for fun, using a recipe I mentioned in an earlier post. I even set the delay timer so we'd have warm bread at a certain time the next day. I learned something: don't use instant yeast in a breadmaker on a delay cycle! Or in a breadmaker at all, for that matter! (I realized it was instant yeast as I was adding the ingredients, and I was hoping somehow it would turn out anyway.) The bread overrose and was the size of a 1 lb loaf, not a 2 lb. Thankfully, it didn't taste terrible, and it was moist and had a good texture, even though it was really dense. So, because I had a pound of instant yeast, I decided to bite the bullet and make the bread WITHOUT A BREADMAKER. This was a pivotal step in our lives. I have never done anything that domestic before. Whoa.

The next Monday, I got out all my ingredients and my Bosch mixer (the subject of a future post). I followed The Wheat Lady's book religiously, and it was a snap, especially using the instant yeast. It only took 10-15 minutes for each rise, and then all I had to do was divide the huge amount of dough into five loaves, put them in the pans, and bake them. It smelled SOOO good in our kitchen, and I felt like such the homemaker as the heavenly smell wafted through the house. I imagined five perfect loaves of bread coming out of the oven. Then reality set in.

My oven, like most electric ovens, is too hot, so I had to guess what temperature to set it at so I didn't burn the outside and leave the inside uncooked. Well, they didn't burn, but at the end of the time, most of the loaves still seemed doughy near the bottom. I put them back in for a little longer. Some of the loaves were bigger than others (I guess I need to learn how to divide more evenly). And they didn't taste quite as good as they smelled. They were also a little on the dense side--not yucky or anything, but not quite how they were supposed to turn out. Sigh. I know it's going to take lots of practice and experience to get this thing down, but I just want my bread to be perfect from the start, and I want my kids to not complain about it. Oh well. If that's all we have, I guess they'll have to learn to like it, right? I just want my bread to look, smell, and taste like. . .Great Harvest. But it's not going to. (I'm still waiting for someone to put a "copycat" recipe out on the web!) One thing's for sure--I need to throw away the flour. I know it's "wasting food," but it's too old, and it doesn't taste very good! So I'm going to head down to the Dry Pack Cannery to buy my wheat, head over to Bountiful to buy my grinder, and then we'll try again. And, as Justin kindly pointed out, maybe while I'm still learning, why don't I try making a little less bread at a time? Sigh.