Good News, Bad News

Well, I finally branched out and tried a bread with whole wheat flour in it. It really works so differently from all white flour! The dough feels different, acts different, tastes different...Here is the recipe that I used:

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 tsp. active dry yeast
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 3 Tbsp honey
• 1 1/2 Tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 1/2 cup buttermilk, at room temperature

Directions:

(This bread recipe was originally for a bread machine, so it did not call for proofing the yeast at all. Since I didn't want to use my machine, and because I was using buttermilk powder, I used 1/2 cup warm water to proof the yeast, and then mixed the amount of buttermilk powder for 1 1/2 cups into the 1 cup of remaining water.)

Mix all ingredients together and knead the dough for 8-10 minutes. Place the dough in an oil coated bowl, covered in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 12-24 hours. Remove dough and allow to rise until doubled in size. Punch down gently and place dough in a well greased loaf pan. Let rise until double in size again. Bake in a preheated 350 degree F oven for 25 minutes, or until bottom of loaf sounds hollow when tapped.

The good news is that the bread comes out tasting absolutely wonderful!!

The bad news is two-fold. The dough as described is too sticky to work with. I added an additional 1 cup of wheat flour and 1/2 cup of white flour to get this dough to knead properly. Even then it was way more sticky than what I was used to. The other problem is that I had read way too many bread recipes the day I made this trying to decide exactly which one to use. I thought the dough was to be divided into two loaves, but it was only to be one. Which is why my loaves are really, really flat. But the texture and flavor of these loaves is wonderful! You just have to eat two slices for every one you would have eaten, which really is no problem at all!

Anyway, I highly recommend trying this recipe as a good gateway into whole wheat flour use.

On a totally unrelated note, have you used any of the lapbooks from Hands of a Child? I ordered the one for early childhood on airplanes and Aaron just loved it! We took a week to do it and only continued Bible and reading and otherwise only looked at airplanes - oh, and we began telling time lessons. Anyway, it was such a good break from our regular schedule. Each day he woke up asking, "Are we going to do plane school today??" I'll definitely order more of these!