It’s no secret that my favourite food in the entire world is bread. I could eat bread all day every day and never let a single other food touch my lips, if I wasn’t somewhat rational about nutrition.
I’m equally keen on baking it. I grew up with my paternal grandmother constantly baking and feeding me bread (the smell of a bread-maker in a kitchen will always remind me of her). My maternal grandmother has a killer dinner roll recipe, whose secrets my own mother knows, but for some unkown reason, I’m not able to master myself.
I also tend to prefer wheat bread to white bread. Growing up we rarely (if ever) had sliced white bread in the house. It was wheat bread all the way. I think that’s why I tend to prefer more complex breads as I age. The ryes, the developed sourdoughs, the very grainy whole wheats.
Knowing that, imagine my delight when our local Aldi started stocking a huge variety of flours at a fraction of the cost that somewhere like Waitrose sold them for.
This Whole Wheat bread recipe is a personal favourite.
Whole Wheat Bread
Ingredients:
2 cups of whole wheat flour
1 cup of plain flour
1/4 teaspoon of yeast
1 teaspoon of salt
1 1/4 cups of room temperature water
Instructions:
Combine all your dry ingredients into a large bowl. (Keep the yeast and the salt on opposite sides of the bowl). Stir in the water until everything is well combined. Your dough will be a bit heavy. Cover the bowl in plastic wrap and let it rise overnight.
The next morning, tip out your dough onto a lightly floured surface and kneed it 10-12 times. Line a bowl in parchment paper and place your dough onto the paper. Cover it with a tea towel and let it rise another 2 hours.
After about 1 1/2 hours, preheat your oven to 230 C and pop in a large casserole pot (with its lid on) into the oven to heat up. After your dough has had it’s full 2 hours, and the casserole pot has had 30 minutes in the oven carefully take the pot out of the oven. (It will be extremely hot!)
Score your dough in a cross shape with a sharp knife. Place the parchment paper and dough inside the pot. Place the lid on top and return it to the oven. Bake for 30 minutes.
After the 30 minutes is up, take the lid off and continue to bake your bread uncovered for a further 10-15 minutes.
Notes:
Remember: your bread will be done when it’s golden-brown, crusty and hollow-sounding when tapped on the bottom.
Are you a wheat bread or a white bread person?
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