Wheat bread.

This is a really yummy homemade wheat bread recipe. Everyone really enjoyed it with dinner tonight. It might even convince me to start making my own bread more often. The bread turned out really soft and light, which I always find hard to get with wheat bread. This is made to use with a dough hook and mixer and I’m told it’s hard to get the lightness if you try to kneed it by hand. It’s a pretty large recipe and will give you 4 loaves of bread. My mixer isn’t that large so I halved the recipe and got 2 nice loaves.

Recipe
From a friend, Edina

3 cups warm water (100-110 degrees)
1 T. sugar
3 T. yeast
2 cups buttermilk
2/3 cup vegetable oil
2/3 cup honey
1/3 cup molasses
2 T. salt
½ tsp. baking soda
6 cups white flour
8 cups wheat flour

Directions
Add warm water, sugar, and yeast to a mixing bowl. Stir to combine. (You can add them directly into the mixer also. If you do that, beat until dissolved.)

In a saucepan with heat on low combine buttermilk, oil, honey, molasses and salt. Warm all the ingredients but not too hot (about 110 degrees). Remove from heat and add the baking soda. Mix until the soda makes the mixture froth.

Add the warm buttermilk mixture to the mixing bowl. Add 6 cups of white flour and 2 cups of wheat flour. Start the machine on low and mix for five minutes. Then add 6 cups wheat flour. (Add additional flour if the dough does not pull away from the sides of the bowl when mixing). Turn the machine on high speed for five minutes. After mixing, let the dough rise in the bowl for 15-20 minutes. Remove the dough onto a greased counter top/cookie sheet and punch down. Let the dough rest 8 minutes and then shape into 4 loaves and put into greased bread pans. Let the loaves rise in a warm place (or a slightly warmed oven) for 35 minutes. Bake @ 350 for 45 minutes. Remove from pans and place on baking rack to cool. Do not refrigerate - it dries them out.