How to make the best bread in the world!

Let's talk about bread today. I grew up with my mom baking bread all the time...but of course I never bothered to pay attention to her magic or learn any of her tricks. Then a time came after I was all grown up, that I decided I needed to start making my own bread. It was a disaster - dry, crumbly, wouldn't hold together to make a sandwich slice. My husband sweetly asked if we could just go back to buying store bought bread. I agreed - my bread was terrible.

Fast forward a few years, and I decided again I was going to figure this bread thing out, if it was the last thing I did! I tried over and over...still had crumbly dry bread, tried different recipes, went to a couple of classes...not sure why I still never bothered to ask my mom for some suggestions. I finally got a recipe from an old friend - a recipe that tasted great - not too dense or heavy for it being whole wheat. It was juuust right! I still wasn't perfect at the breadmaking, but after watching my friend make her bread, I discovered there is an awful lot to making bread that is not written into those recipes!!

My bread has improved over the years, to the point where my kids complain on the rare occasion I buy bread, and the store bought bread ends up going stale or moldy because no one will eat it. One time when we were on a vacation (and not baking bread), my son asked me what was on the menu for lunch. I told him we were having Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches, and he said, "It's not going to be on store bought bread, is it?" Yes, they are spoiled. I'll have to teach each one of my kids how to make their own bread before they leave for college!!

Over the years of baking and improving on my bread, I noticed a few variables that really made a difference:

Yeast - For a while I was using Red Star yeast from Costco. It was ok, but I wasn't always getting the most consistent results from the yeast. When I switched to Fleischmann's yeast...all of the sudden, my bread was consistent and perfect. Every time. So take it for what it's worth. You welcome, Fleischmann.

Wheat - You need to make sure you use Hard White Winter Wheat. This is different than the Red Wheat, which is also usually available where ever you can find wheat. Where do I buy wheat, you ask? Good question! Over the last 10 years of baking bread, I have used wheat from numerous sources. When I got to where I was pretty consistent in baking my bread, I started noticing that sometimes the texture of my bread wasn't quite right, or the flavor wasn't quite right...and I could almost always trace it back to the bucket of wheat (or yeast). Once I started using Hard White Winter Wheat from Montana Milling...my bread came out perfect, every time. So I quit buying it from other sources.

So without further ado...here's the beloved bread recipe that I learned from my lifelong friend LeAnn, and has been shared with countless people:

LeAnn's Whole Wheat Bread
makes 4 loaves

1/3 cup Oil

1/3 cup Molasses

1/3 cup Honey

1 T Salt

3 T Yeast

5 ½ cups Warm water - not too hot, just warm enough to wash your hands...but not too cool!

½ cup wheat gluten (optional...but makes texture of bread so nice!)

12-14 cups Whole wheat flour (freshly ground from Hard White Winter Wheat)

1. Mix the first 5 ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Then add the warm water and stir it all together. Let it sit for about 10-15 minutes, until there are big frothy bubbles. Meanwhile, grind your wheat into flour.

You should be able to see the bubbles growing and the foam forming right before your eyes!

2. After the yeast water is bubbly, add gluten and 10 cups of flour. Mix for about 10 minutes on a stand mixer on high, until the consistency has changed to a big glop and sticks together into a nice ball. (I used a Kitchen Aid stand mixer before getting a commercial sized mixer, but I think the Bosch mixers are supposed to be among the best bread mixers.)

This is how the dough looks when you first start mixing - it all sits at the bottom of the bowl.

As it mixes on high, it gradually becomes less lumpy and more smooth, gathering to the dough hook.

You know the dough has mixed long enough, when all of the dough has pulled away from the sides, and is gathered around the hook in a smooth ball.

3. Add remaining flour (2-4 cups) and mix well. You can tell if there is enough flour by oiling your fingers and touching the dough. If it is sticking to your fingers, it needs more flour. If it isn’t sticking to your fingers, you have enough flour. Don’t add so much flour that the dough becomes really stiff - you want to put in just enough flour to keep it from sticking to your fingers. Then put the flour away - you won’t need it anymore!
***This step is the trickiest to get right. The amount of flour needed will vary, depending on how much moisture is on the atmosphere. It takes practice to learn what the texture should feel right when you get enough flour. Sometimes I still mess up, not putting in quite enough flour, and I can tell a difference in the loaves. Just keep practicing, and you'll get it right!

4. Put the dough in an oiled bowl, and flip the ball of dough over in the bowl so the whole ball is oiled. Cover the bowl with a towel, and let rise until it is twice its original size, about 30 - 40 minutes...at high altitude. I've never baked at low altitude, so you sea-level people will have to figure out that timing on your own!

Here's how the dough looks just after adding the last of the flour, oiling it, and ready to rise...

And just 30 - 40 minutes later... (that's at high altitude - might be different at your house!)

5. Divide the dough in to 4 equal portions, then form into 4 loaves and put into greased pans. (DO NOT use flour to keep the dough from sticking to the counter when you are forming the dough! It will ruin the texture. Use oil on your hands and the counter top. I often re-oil the counter before each loaf that I form. *If you are finding that you are needing to oil your hands frequently in this step and still having the dough stick to your hands, then you needed to add more flour in step 3. You can't do anything about it in your current batch, but just make a mental note that you need more flour next time.)