Grinding Wheat and Baking Bread

I've been talking about my bread baking on Facebook for a long time, so I finally decided to blog about it. This post will be just about the process and recipe. I will post another time about the benefits of doing bread this way. The main difference is that I grind my own wheat, instead of using store bought flour. It's much healthier because the whole grain kernal is natural and intact. I buy in 6 gallon buckets. I use hard white wheat (in the bucket on the left) and hard red wheat (in the bucket on the right). I mix the two wheats together and that is what you see in the third smaller bucket. This is my wheat grinder. This one is the Whisper Mill...I don't know why it's called the 'whisper' mill...it's so loud. I think they actually changed the name of this mill to the 'wonder mill'. It's electric so all I do is fill up the top of the grinder with wheat and let it do all the work. The kernals are ground and it comes out in the bucket to the right as flour. At this point, you can use the flour to make waffles, pancakes, bread, pizza dough... just about anything that you would use regular flour for.

One thing I love about making my own bread is that I know exactly what ingredients are going into my food...and I can spell and pronounce all of them. This bread recipe has only 6 ingredients: 5 cups of water, 1 1/4 cups oil, 3/4 cups honey, 3 Tbsp instant yeast, 12-13 cups freshly ground flour and 5 tsp of salt. (this recipe makes 5 loaves of bread, but if you don't have a big mixer you can cut the recipe in half.)

I pour all of the wet ingredients into my mixer, then add the yeast and salt and finally start to add the flour as the mixer starts to mix. I love my mixer as between the grinder and mixer it does all the hard work of making bread. Mine even has a timer, so after all the ingredients are in the mixer, I set the timer for 10 minutes. Then I take out the scraper and dough hook and cover the bowl with a wet cloth to let the dough rise until it fills the mixing bowl...usually double in size. This is what it looks like after it has risen. I usually let it rise a bit more, but this time I didn't... my family was hungry!

At this point I pull the dough out of the mixing bowl and onto the counter that I have sprayed with oil. I divide the dough into 5 equal sections and form into a nice oblong shape, then place into a bread pan that has been sprayed with oil. I set on the stove top and cover with the wet towel and let it rise again until it fills the bread pan. I usually go ahead and turn the oven on to preheat and this heat also helps the dough rise faster. With this dough recipe I usually make 3 loaves of bread and use the rest of the dough to make other things. I roll out pizza crust (some large and some individual size) that I wrap in wax paper and plastic wrap and it goes straight into the freezer. When we need a quick lunch or dinner, we just pull out pizza crust, spread on spagetti sauce and top with our favorite toppings then bake for 10-12 minutes. I also make rolls. I take a muffin pan, roll small balls of dough, placing 3 balls in each muffin space. I freeze them in the pan. After they are frozen, I take out and place into a freezer bag. When I want rolls for dinner, I take them out in the morning placing each roll back into the muffin pan and set on the counter to thaw and rise during the day. When it's dinner time, I bake for 8-10 minutes.

Finally cinnamon rolls! This is my family's favorite and I always have these ready in the freezer. I roll out the dough into a rectangle shape. Coat the dough with butter, sprinkle heavily with cinnamon, then sugar (we use Splenda), more cinnamon and more Splenda...sometimes I use Sugar in the Raw. Roll into a log shape and cut into 1" sections. Place about an inch apart in freezer and baking safe pie plates or baking dishes and cover. They are ready to go in the freezer. When you are ready for cinnamon rolls for breakfast, pull a batch out of the freezer and set on the kitchen counter the night before (at bedtime). They will thaw and rise and when you wake up, just bake them on 350 for 15-18 minutes. This pic is a batch ready to go into the freezer.

Here is the bread after it comes out of the oven...So beautiful, healthy and you just can't beat the smell of fresh baked bread as it fills up the house.
I hope you enjoy this post and recipe. Can't wait to tell you all about the benefits of grinding your own wheat...you'll never eat store bought bread products again!

This post brought to you by brown wedge shoes that I like to wear to the pool. lol