Homemade Whole Wheat Bread

Homemade bread is something I've always wanted to make, but intimidated me. After working up the courage I decided to give it a go. After trying a few recipes out, but not loving any of them I got the Lion House Baking Cookbook. The recipe from there is by far by fav.

Ingredients:

1 T. active dry yeast

1 1/2 cups warm water

1/2 cup oatmeal

2 T. molasses

3 T. dry milk

3 T. shortening (or softened butter)

2 1/2 cups whole wheat flower

3/4 T. salt

1 cup white flour

Heidi's take on the ingredients:

• The recipe orginally called for 1 t. yeast. The loaves I made were kinda small, so I changed it to 1 T. This helped a lot (and was much more consistent with all other recipes of homemade bread I could find.)
• I've never used molasses, just honey.
• I've never used shortening, just butter. (I've never actually tried it with margarine... Don't think it would make that big of a difference though. Basically you're just adding some fat to the dough.)
• DO NOT skip on the dry milk. It makes a big difference!

First, pour your yeast and warm water into a bowl. Also add the honey. This adds some sugar which helps activate the yeast and gives it something to "eat." If you are using regular instant yeast, you'll want to let it sit for a few minutes. This is what the "yeast mixture" will look like after first being stirred together.
After 5-10 minutes, a foamy, bubbly mixture should start to float to the top of the yeast mixture. This means it's "alive" and ready to go. This is a picture of what it should look like.

Mix the oatmeal, dry milk, and salt into the yeast/water mixture. Next add all the white flour, and half the whole wheat flour. Mix together into a doughy ball. At this point, your spoon is probably useless. I end up just using my hands from here on out. Now, listen up. It is not necessary to use the entire amount of flour. The less flour you use the more fluffy and airy (and better tasting) your bread will be. Add the rest of the flour in about 1/4-1/2 c. amounts at a time. Basically you want to add only enough flour until you feel you can handle it.

Knead the ball for 2-5 minutes. This will let all the air bubbles are all out and start to activate the gluten in the wheat. Put dough back into a greased bowl, spray with cooking spray, cover, and let sit to raise (about double in size). Hint: if you want to raise the bread quicker, fill the bottom of your sink with warm water. Put bowl in water. It will cut the amount of time needed to raise in half (25-30 minutes).

After it has doubled in size, take dough out of the bowl and knead again for a minute or two, getting out all the bubbles and air inside. Form into a small loaf shaped size and place into a greased bread pan. Grease, cover and let raise until double in size. Hint: it's extremely important for you to grease the top of the bread at this point. If you don't, when you go to take the covering off the top of the bread, it will stick and you will have to start over and let it re-raise. Learned this the hard way.

Hint #2-You can raise the bread faster in the bread pan by turning your oven on to "warm." It should take about 25-30 minutes to raise.
Remove cover and bake bread at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes. Bread should have a light brown crust and should sound "hollow" when tapped on.