3 1/2 cups milk -- very warm
2/3 cup sugar -- or honey
2/3 cup vegetable oil -- not olive
4 teaspoons salt
3/4 ounce dry yeast
1 1/2 cups whole-grain flour -- graham
1 1/2 cups bread flour
remainder all purpose white flour
Mix all the non-flour items (make sure the milk is not too hot to the
touch, or it will kill the yeast). Mix in the whole wheat and bread
flour. Then knead in enough of the all purpose flour so that the dough does
not stick appreciably to your hands (this may take 10 minutes of kneading).
Put the dough into a really large bowl, rub some oil on the top of the dough
so it doesn't get crusty (dry out) when rising. Cover the bowl with some waxed
paper (etc.) and put in a warm place.
When approx. doubled in size, form portions of dough into loaves and put in
pans (This makes about 6 small loaves for me). Put pans with dough in them
in a warm place (I just put them in the oven at this point and don't turn the
gas on until its risen). Let them rise until about doubled. Bake at 325F for
small loaves, 300F for big loaves (my oven's a bit hot, so you may need a slightly
higher temperature) on the bottom rack in the oven until the tops are all brown.
After taking the pans out of the oven, let cool for about 5 minutes then take
the bread out of the pans and lay them on their sides on cooling racks. When
they're cool, I put most of them in zip-lock bags and freeze them for the week. |
