A new variation on our favorite bread...

OMG... This is soooo good! I'm so happy my hubby picked up the wrong kind of flour last week! My favorite flour is Dakota Maid unbleached all purpose flour. My hubby mistakenly picked up Bread flour last  week. Now you may think this is not a big deal but if you want to make pancakes and muffins it does not work so well. Bread flour has more protein and gluten so things bake with a more dense consistency.  I wanted to use up the bread flour so I was doing some reading and decided I would try to adapt our favorite sandwich bread.
  I decided to try substituting a cup of wheat flour for a cup of the white all purpose and bread flour for the rest of the all purpose. My thinking was 1. I follow a similar process when making the light wheat from the Artisan bread in 5 minutes cook book. 2. you need more gluten when working with wheat flours because the tend to be more dense.

Here is the altered recipe Printable recipe is here

*Makes 2 loaves

INGREDIENTS

3 cups luke-warm water

1/4 cup sugar

1 1/2 Tbsp. yeast

1/3 cup oil

1 Tbsp. salt

 5- 6 cups bread flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

DIRECTIONS

In a large mixing bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water and sugar. Let sit 10 minutes. Add the oil. Add the dry ingredients starting with wheat flour, then add 1 cup of white flour and then add the salt. Mix until combined. Add flour 1 cup at a time until dough pulls away from the side of the bowl or knead the dough thoroughly until all ingredients are incorporated, and dough is smooth, elastic, very slightly sticky (6-10 minutes). As you knead the dough, you may add more flour as needed, and repeat the process until dough reaches the desired consistency. 

Cover the bowl of dough with a dish towel or plastic wrap and let rise until doubled (an hour or more depending on how warm your kitchen is.) If your kitchen is cold like mine you can place the covered bowl inside the oven with the oven light on, and another bowl of warm water sitting on the lower rack. Or if you are like me and your crockpot is always on the counter you can remove the cover, set a cooling rack on top and set heat to warm. Place your covered bowl on top. Warning! if your Crock pot runs hot turn it off after a while otherwise this is what happens :)

FYI this was not todays dough and I did manage to save the above batch and the bread was fine.

Punch the dough down, divide and and form into 2 loaves. Place the dough in 2 greased bread pans. (I use 9" pans.) Cover and let rise till the top of the dough is an inch or two above the bread pans. Even in my cold kitchen this part only takes about 30-45 minutes.

Bake at 375 degrees for 25 minutes. Brish the tops of the bread lightly with butter. Remove the baked loaves from their pans immediately, and place on a cooling rack.Slice and serve after they have cooled for at least an hour.

 Girl Approved!

Please disregard my children's disheveled look. We are  on spring break and getting dressed is not high on our priority list :)

                                                                      The Boy loves it too!

Putz Factor 3