Bread Baking

Early Thanksgiving week I usually bake home-made rolls to be frozen for Thanksgiving dinner and other dinners.  I have been grinding my own wheat for about 14 years now, and I have a heavy duty dough mixer that can handle 9 or more cups of flour at a time so I have also gone through periods on and off where I have made all of my breads myself.

Sometimes I will make 4 dozen rolls out of my one batch, but this year I made one dozen cloverleaf rolls (for Thanksgiving), a dozen "regular" rolls, a dozen hamburger buns (I should have made 8 rather than 12, as they ended up a bit small but that's ok), and a loaf of bread from my one recipe.  I use 100% winter white wheat berries for all of my baking, as it has all the nutrition of whole wheat (because it is whole wheat), but it bakes up very light and makes a good multi purpose flour.

The recipe is from a book called "Hearth & Home".

Place in a Bosch bowl:  3 cups warm water, 2 T instant yeast, 1/3 cup oil, 1/3 cup honey, 1/4 cup gluten (optional), 3 cups whole wheat flour -- mix and let sponge 10 minutes, then add 1 1/2 t salt, 3 eggs, 3 1/2-4 1/2 cups flour to until it starts to clean the bowl.  Knead for 5-6 minutes.  You can of course do all of this by hand also, but you would knead for about 15 minutes I think.  After kneading, oil your hands and the counter and dump the dough out -- divide into 4 sections, and then shape into 4 loaves, or each section into a dozen rolls, or 8 hamburger or hotdog buns, or a pizza base, or cinnamon rolls or whatever. For rolls, bake at 375 for 10-15 minutes.  I started putting these together at about noon that day, and pulled them all out of the oven at 1:20.  With instant yeast and fresh ground wheat, there is no need for rising beyond what they do while preparing and baking.

linking to Boogie Board Cottage Masterpiece Monday