Natural Yeast, Honey Whole Wheat Bread

You may not understand all the science behind natural yeast. You just know that it's good for you and you want to make bread. Here's a step by step to making delicious, light, beautiful bread with natural yeast.

According to my previous post, you've come to this point with your Raisin water starter and you're ready to bake with it. If not, see my previous post on how to make Raisin water yeast.

The first thing to do now is prepare your wheat. You can buy whole wheat at the store but I recommend grinding your own wheat with a wheat grinder. Whole wheat flour loses 45% of its nutrients to oxidation within 24 hours and in only 3 days it loses up to 90 percent of its nutrients. I grind my wheat and bake with it immediately.

I prefer Hard White Wheat as opposed to Hard Red Wheat. They are both cultivated wheats and equal in protein and nutrients. Hard Red Wheat has a more robust flavor that I found to be a little too strong for my tastes. Hard White Wheat depending on whether it is spring wheat or winter wheat is lighter in color and more closely resembles the white bread we're used to eating (in case you have picky eaters that balk at the idea of eating whole wheat bread).

One cup of hard wheat makes a cup and a half of flour.

The Wonder Mill works great but you need to remember to turn it on before putting the grain in and let it run for a few seconds after the grain has all gone through.

Tap the sides of your flour container to help the flour settle before taking the lid off.

Here is the recipe we will be using:

2 C room temperature bottled water
All of your starter
2 T salt
2/3 C honey (I prefer local if you can find it)
2/3 C coconut oil
3 eggs (I'm thinking you could do without this but I haven't tried it yet to see what affect it will have)
7 C flour at first, then 1/2 to 1 1/2 cups more as needed

If you have a Kitchen Aid or a Bosch it will make your experience much easier.

First I blend the water and starter with the whisk or paddle blade of my Kitchen Aid. I actually think the paddle blade is better.

I use all of my yeast. It can range from 2 cups to 3 cups. I pour it into the bowl and leave whatever is left in the jar to settle at the bottom. It will measure about a 1/4 cup so then I will feed it 1/4 cup water and 1/4 cup flour and voila your starter is ready to grow again.

Add the honey,

And the coconut oil.

If your oil is firm melt it for a few seconds in the microwave, otherwise you will have large chunks in your dough.

Add the eggs.

I've seen many recipes that don't call for eggs. I may start leaving them out and see what affect that has. I will post about it when I do.

I mix all of this for just a minute or two so it is well blended.

Then I remove my whisk blade and replace it with my dough blade. I mix 7 cups of flour on my lowest speed just to incorporate all of the ingredients. If the dough is still really wet I add another cup or so. Here is the trick, depending on how much yeast you used you need to adjust for how much flour you need to add later. If you used 3 cups of yeast it already has quite a bit of flour in it so you may not need to add as much. If you only had 1 1/2 cups yeast or 2 cups you will want to use a total of 8 to 8 1/2 cups of flour.

The goal is to have the dough be really sticky once the ingredients have all been incorporated. Then run your mixer on the next speed up (number 2 on the Kitchen Aid) for a full 10 minutes. You want the dough to stick to the sides of the bowl for the first few minutes. As the yeast activates with the gluten in the wheat it will begin to bind and stretch, tightening your dough.

I took this picture a little late in the mixing process. It will be more sticky than this for the first few minutes.

While your dough is mixing grease a large bowl. I have a lid for this bowl that I also grease and will seal halfway on top of my bowl after I put the bread in.

At the end of 10 minutes your dough will clean the sides of the bowl and stick together as a tight ball. If you've added too much flour this will happen within the first few minutes of kneading. That will make for a dryer loaf. If you haven't added enough flour your dough will still stick to the sides of the bowl and may turn out crumbly after baking. Try not to stress out. This just takes practice. If you can watch someone do this once it may help a great deal. I would be happy to show you. (But note, I am by no means an expert).

Here is another important note. Natural Yeast needs moisture to keep it active. As you handle your dough dip your fingers in a bowl of bottled or distilled water. You do not need extra flour to handle your dough. It's a brave new concept but it works.

Dip your fingers in some water and scoop your dough out of the mixing bowl into your greased bowl.

Cover it with a wet towel, saran wrap, or a lid half way sealed, and let sit for at least 6 hours and up to 12 hours. This one sat for about 8 and a half hours.

On a wet surface divide your dough into 2 or 3 loaves. It is a very wet dough. There isn't much playing around you can do with it (I will work on recipes for artisan breads later). You can shape it a little in your wet hands so you have a smooth side and then drop it into a greased loaf pan.

Cover it with greased wax paper and let it sit for another 2-2 1/2 hours. My dough was really small in these pans. It doubled in size in that time. Although it looks small here it still rose in the oven when I baked it. I could have just used 2 loaf pans but I don't care for giant sized loaves.

Bake your loaves in an oven that has been preheated to 350 degrees. Bake them for 25-30 min. Once the bread has pulled away from the sides of the pan it's done.

I remove my bread from the pans right away and set them on a cooling rack. You need to let the loaves cool completely before cutting into them. They will continue to cook until they are completely cool. If you cut into them too early the centers will still be doughy.

This is how the bread looked when we cut into it the next morning. The raisin water yeast gives it such a wonderful flavor.

Another suggestion is to make your dough at night and let it rise while you're sleeping and then divide it in the morning and bake it after it's risen for 2 hours. I started this one in the morning because I was so excited my yeast had risen I didn't want to wait until that night to start using it. I'm not the most patient person.