Making Bread From Scratch With Organic Ingredients – An Easy Recipe.

After I mentioned somewhere that we were making our own bread at home instead of buying it at the store, a reader emailed me and asked for the recipe we were using. So I figured that if one person was interested, maybe a few more might be as well! We make this bread with organic ingredients and without kneading or a bread maker, and it is pretty easy to make a few loaves at a time and freeze them until you need them.

While you can certainly buy “healthy” bread at the store, there is something about making it yourself and seeing the ingredients go in that is very satisfying. The basic recipe is one we found in Mother Earth News, and then I made a few small adjustments along the way. Take a look:

1 1/2 tablespoon granulated yeast
1 tablespoon salt
3/4 cup organic honey
6 tablespoons organic olive oil
1 1/2 cups 1% organic milk
1 1/2 cups lukewarm water
6 2/3 cups whole wheat organic flour

These are the basic whole-wheat recipe ingredients, to which you can add spices, herbs, etc to your liking, and it makes enough dough for two 9×4x3 size baking pan loaves. And this is how you make the bread:

1. Mix yeast, honey, salt oil, milk and water in a bowl. I actually put all the ingredients right into the mixing bowl, already attached to the mixer.

2. Slowly mix the flour into this mixture. As I mentioned above, I use our KitchenAid mixer and a dough hook to mix the ingredients, but you can do it by hand with a spoon if you want.

3. Once the ingredients are nice and mixed, cover the bowl (I use a clean dish towel) and leave at room temperature for about 2-3 hours until the dough flattens out on top. Once that happens, it’s time to make bread!

4. Grease the baking pans with olive oil so the bread won’t stick to the sides and bottom. Using wet hands, scoop out 1/2 of the dough mixture, form it into a large ball, and drop it into one of the pans. Repeat with the other half of the dough still left. The pans should be more than 1/2 full with the wet dough.

5. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and sprinkle some flour (or whatever you want – flax seed, etc.) on the top. Wait for oven to reach temperature.

6. Take your broiler pan out of your broiler, add 1 1/2 cups of water to it, and put it in your oven (not your broiler) on the bottom shelf.

7. Place the baking pans full of dough into the oven on the middle rack in the center of the oven.

8. Bake for 60 minutes (time will depend on how your oven cooks, ours takes the full 60). Once done, remove from the pans and let the bread cool on a cookie rack…OK, you can sneak a warm piece after a few minutes! Keep that one out to eat, wrapped in aluminum foil, and freeze the other one for later. For freezing I wrap in a small piece of plastic wrap followed by another layer of foil – it seems to keep the bread nice at least for a little while in the freezer.

That’s it! You can also make rolls or any other type of loaf with this same recipe, so be sure to experiment. Once you get the hang of it, making your own bread becomes quite fun…especially when you realize you are controlling the ingredients and you don’t have to buy from the store anymore.

Anyone else make their own bread? What do you make and how do you make it? Let us know in the comments, and if you try the recipe be sure to come back and tell us how it was for you!

You may also like:

1. To Organic Or Not To Organic – It’s An Obvious Choice.
2. How To Save Energy & Money In Your Kitchen.
3. Do One Thing: Buy Organic, Free-Trade Coffee.
4. Planning A Local Holiday Meal.
5. Organic Is Just Another Word For “Old-Fashioned”.

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