Transitioning to Homemade Bread
I have long resisted transitioning to homemade bread. This has primarily been due to the fact that most of my attempts to do so have been pretty big failures. I’ve found that it’s pretty easy to make a bread that tastes great while warm with butter … it’s a little harder to make a bread that can be sliced thin enough for a sandwich that isn’t too unwieldy without crumbling apart.
Finding a bread machine at a garage sale for cheap wasn’t too hard. (Also how I found my dehydrator, but that’s another post.) There are a handful of items that people seem to buy — or receive as presents — with the best of intentions, but never actually get used. Never buy these new! You can almost always find them in “used once” or even “used never” at a good price.
Anywhoo. After much flailing around, I finally found the perfect bread for my family. I started with a Taste of Home recipe and modified it for whole grains and changed it from sunflower seeds to walnuts. Give it a try in your bread machine, let me know if you like it! I can report that, the day after making it, I can slice it quite thinly and successfully for sandwiches. And the kids love it.
Wheeler Bread
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons warmish water
1/4 cup honey
2 tablespoons butter, softened
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup quick-cooking oats
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups white flour
4 tsp vital wheat gluten
2 tablespoon nonfat dry milk powder
2-1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
1/2 cup chopped up walnuts
And I usually sprinkle some more extra wheat germ and some ground flax seed on top, on the sides away from the yeast (though I’m not sure if that matters), to boot. No more than about 1-2 tb of either, though.
I pick the 1.5lb wheat setting and let it fly. I realize it could be a little easier if I bought bread flour and didn’t muss with the vital wheat gluten, but I never seem to have bread flour, and this works for me.