Tips to Make Whole Wheat Bread

It is much healthier to bake your own bread instead of buying bread that contains chemical additives, hydrogenated oils, unhealthy preservatives, and fattening sweeteners. If you buy white bread you're also getting bread that is nutritionless. But don't be fooled, store bought whole wheat bread is just as bad for you.

A lot of times the whole wheat bread sold in stores isn't really made out of "whole meal" but is just white bread that is colored (using caramel) to make it appear like it's whole grain and healthy. Store bought whole wheat bread also contains the same emulsifiers, and chemical by products that are in store bought white bread.

A popular bread amongst Italians is a type of milk bread. It's baked with milk, water, flour and olive oil. It has a round shape, with an indented cross in the middle - it looks like a large hot cross bun. The surface is browned and crisped and the inside is white as snow. The texture is airy. Don't even try to compare this to your standard commercial loaf of white bread.

Ingredients

1/2 cup yellow corn meal
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp salt
2 cups boiling water
1/4 cup cooking oil
2 pkgs active dry yeast
1/2 cup lukewarm water
3/4 cup sifted whole wheat flour
1/2 cup sifted rye flour
4 1/4 to 4 1/2 cup sifted all-purpose flour

Preparation

• Pre-heat oven at 425 degrees. Mix together flour, salt, sugar, and baking soda in a large mixing bowl.
• Use a knife or pie cutter to knead butter into the flour concoction. The texture should look like coarse meal.
• Add raisins
• Leave a hole in the middle of the flour mixture and then add the buttermilk and egg to this hole. Mix well with a wooden spoon. Continue until the dough is too firm to mix any longer.
• Add a little flour to your hands and work the dough in the bowl enough to form a rough ball, but no more! Too much will work against it.
• Move the dough to a new surface coated with flour. Here you can mold it into a loaf.
• Now slightly grease a skillet or a baking sheet and move the dough onto this. With a sharp knife, cut a cross or "X" shape about half an inch deep into the dough. Historically this is said to bless the bread!

In a large bowl, combine the flours, baking soda, and salt. Blend together well. In a medium bowl, combine the honey, buttermilk, oil, and eggs. Mix well. Add the liquid mixture (honey, buttermilk, oil, and eggs) to the dry ingredients mixture. Stir just enough to moisten. Gently fold in the pecans and dates. Pour the batter into a well-greased 8 inch loaf pan. Bake in a 325 degree oven for one hour or until it tests done. Allow the bread to cool in the pan for 10 minutes and then remove it onto a wire rack to finish cooling.

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