As promised earlier today, I am writing up a short little post to share with you one of my favourite bread recipes.  In an ideal world, I would be using wild yeast from my own sourdough starter and soaking my grain first… however with a busy little farm and 4 miniature farmers, sometimes that is just not a reality in our home. There have been seasons on the farm (sometimes lasting for years) when I have used traditional long rising bread methods and seasons where I simply don’t.  Either that means we are buying our bread at Costco or using this method which has only 3 ingredients and is done in around an hour.  This is still a 100% whole wheat recipe and you don’t even need a kitchen machine to make it, just a bowl and a strong wooden spoon.

(Some day I will make my recipes in a cute, printable format, but for now it is in plain text.)

100% Whole Wheat Batter Bread

(2 loaves)

In a large mixing bowl mix:

7 cups whole wheat flour (sometimes I grind my own flour from Organic Red Fife wheat, other times I use store bought Organic flour)

2 tsp sea salt

4 heaping tsp instant yeast

Add:

4 cups very warm water (not hot, but warmer than you use for traditional yeast)

Mix it with a wooden spoon until it is combined.  You may need to add a touch more water in order to stir it well.  It should be a very thick, sticky dough.  Don’t over mix it.

Grease two loaf pans and dump the batter evenly into each.  Wet your hands and smooth the tops of the loaves.  Add a handful of oatmeal, sesame seeds or something like that if you would like to stop your towel from getting dough on it. Drape a tea towel loosely over the pans or cover with plastic wrap.

Preheat your oven to 450°.  When your oven has preheated (about 20 minutes), your bread should have started to rise. If you need to let it rise a bit longer, go ahead, it should be about 1/2 inch or so below the edge of the pan.

Bake the bread for 20 minutes and then reduce the oven to 350° for 35 minutes.  Remove from pans and cool on a cooling rack.

That’s it!  We currently make this bread 3 or 4 times a week. The original recipe (I have made it even simpler) is from an amazing book called Forgotten Skills of Cooking: The Lost Art of Creating Delicious Home Produce, by Darina Allen.  It is truly a must-have book for homestead cooking and I go back to it over and over again.   Cheesemaking, sausage making, curing meat and canning, it’s all in there!

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