Baking your own bread at home is amazingly rewarding both in terms of taste and experience. I can totally understand that it’s so much easier to buy a sandwich bread from the store than to bake on your own. But every once in a while, it’s a nice project to be signed up for if you love baking at home like I do. Especially, if you don’t consume bread that regularly. The whole wheat sandwich bread we get in the market generally has certain ingredients, which are not good for health. But at home, we can definitely quality check the ingredients and we know what we are consuming. Baking a simple sandwich loaf isn’t that arduous task, as it might look like. In fact, for us, it’s rather simpler to knead the dough by hand, as we eat a lot of chapatis, which require a lot of dough kneading every day. But if you think, you can’t handle the sticky dough with your hands, you could definitely resort to the food processor attached with dough kneading attachment. And then all you need to do is to proof, shape and bake the bread. The mixing, kneading, proofing, and shaping of the bread is a little time taking process, so I’ll suggest that you do it on a weekend when you’ve got enough time. But that doesn’t mean that you have to be on your toes throughout the process. There is a very little active time involved actually. So while dough is resting and proofing, you could definitely go run your errands. The recipe yields two loaves, so you could halve the ingredients and make just one if you want.
- 700 gm whole wheat flour
- 175 gm plain flour
- 350 ml warm water
- 200 ml warm skimmed milk
- 2 tsp active dry yeast
- 50 ml honey
- 2 tbsp oil
- 1 tbsp salt
- Pour the water in a big bowl and add yeast to add. Let it stand for 10 minutes, so that it is foamy and bubbly on top. If the yeast is not foamy or very bubbly, it has expired and you need a fresh one. Add in milk, honey and oil.
- Add both the flours and salt and mix well. The dough will look very shaggy and not at all smooth. Let it sit for 15 to 20 minutes, so that flour absorb all the liquid.
- Dust the work surface with flour. Take the dough out on the work surface and knead the dough for about 8 to 10 minutes, until it becomes very smooth and supple. If you want you can do this step in a food processor attached with dough hook as well.
- Shape the dough into a ball and place in lightly oiled boil. Cover with cling wrap and let it rest for about 2 hours, until it doubles in volume.
- Divide the dough into two halves. Taking one half at a time, shape the dough into a rectangle. Fold the bottom third of the dough over itself. Then fold the top of the dough down so that it overlaps the lower layer, giving it a letter fold. Pinch the dough with your fingers, where top layer meets the lower layer, so that it is sealed. Repeat the process of flattening into rectangle, folding and pinching.
- Place the shaped loaves into lightly oiled bread pans. Dust the loaves with flour. Taking a sharp knife or blade, cut a slit in the middle of bread along the longer side of the pan. Let them rise for about 1 to 1.5 hours, until the dough rises above the edges of the pan.
- Preheat the oven to 220 degree C. Lower the temperature to 180 degree C and place the pans into the oven. Bake for about 30 to 35 minutes. Pans should sound hollow when tapped at the bottom after they are done baking. Invert onto wire racks and let them cool completely for couple of hours, before slicing.
- You can also add mix of seeds and rolled oats while kneading the dough.