Yeasted Whole Wheat Bread

Ingredients

Water
Unrefined sugar
Yeast
Whole wheat flour
Olive Oil
Salt

Mix

In a ceramic/glass bowl:

1 C water – warm not hot (100-110°)
1 T unrefined sugar

Note that the purpose of the sugar is to feed the yeast not sweeten the bread.

Sprinkle on top

1 T yeast

It will sit on top, then dissolve, then drop, then rise in foam. This shows that the yeast is alive. If it doesn't exhibit this foaminess you should start over with another source of yeast.

Grind into flour

3 C hard red winter wheat kernels

If you do not have a flour mill you can, of course, use flour that you have purchased. 100% whole wheat. You will need 5–6 cups.

Add 2 C flour to yeast mixture.

Stir well

Add

1 tsp salt
1 T olive oil

Stir well

Kneading

Add more flour until you can no longer stir it easily. Turn it onto a flat surface and knead with your hands adding more flour as needed. Knead 5–10 minutes or more – adding flour until the dough is no longer sticky. The amount of water used determines how much flour is needed.

Wash bowl.

Add just a dribble of olive oil to the bottom and swish it around with your fingers.

Put dough in bowl to coat bottom with oil.

Invert dough so the oiled surface is on top.

Rising 1

Cover bowl with moistened dish towel. Put in oven with only the light on. This will provide a source of heat to keep the temperature about 80–90° F. You could turn on the oven (at any temperature) for 30-40 seconds to heat it up just a little. It doesn't really matter - the dough will simply take longer to rise.

Let sit for 1-2 hours until it has doubled in size due to the yeast action. Don't let it go much longer than it needs to double because it will be rising again in the bread pan.

Punch it down to release the air/gas. Kids love to do this.

Rising 2

Take dough out of bowl and knead it again for 5 minutes.

Form it into a loaf.

Place in loaf pan lined with parchment paper.

Set again in a warm oven to rise.

Baking

When it has risen almost enough take out and turn oven up to 350° F. When the oven is ready put loaf in to bake for 45 minutes.

Take out of pan somehow.
Let cool.
Eat.

The temptation of eating warm, fresh, homemade, just-out-of-the-oven bread may be too much for you. You may find yourself cutting the bread before it has cooled. This is fine. Enjoy.