Basic Whole Wheat Bread | Brown Bread

I remember, just over 6 months back when I was taking baby steps into the baking-with-yeast world and when I had successfully made my first batch of Stuffed Buns, I had bumped into Anisha's post on this simple wholewheat bread and I was simply awed by the simplicity and the ease with which she made it. Without wasting much time, I jumped right in and tried my hands at baking it... was so positive I would get it right! But Alas, it flopped... and flopped again the next day (yes! I did not give up, I tried to make it twice more the next day!). But sadly it did not work for me, I had no clue what was causing the failure. Disheartened, I just shelved the idea of baking bread for a while.

Then, eventually as I got introduced to Instant yeast, I gingerly experimented some more and went on to bake some fancy Breads and Buns... but this simple wholewheat bread recipe sat waiting to be tried out.. yet again! On retrospection, I figured what the problem was back then!! I was playing around with Active Dry yeast and it supposedly wasn't too good! No wonder, the bread turned out so hard! Sigh! It really wasn't a fault in my prep, the nasty yeast was the culprit! So all you newbie bakers, trying to get friendly with yeast, don't be hard on yourself if your bread did not turn out great... it may just be the yeast you are using! This post on yeast may be helpful.

So with renewed spirits, I gave it another shot a few weeks back... and boy, was I delighted! :) I made 3 small loaves, as I really loved the idea and these look adorable! :)



Adapted from: Flavours 

Makes : 3 mini loaves/1 medium sized loaf

Serves : 3-4

Prep Time & Waiting Time (for dough to rise) : 1 hour

Cooking Time : 20 mins

Ingredients:

Wheat flour - 2 and 1/2 cup

Warm Milk - 1 cup

Instant Yeast - 2.5 tsp

Sugar - 1/2 tbsp

Olive Oil - 1/2 tbsp

Method



• I followed this procedure [How to make yeast dough?] to prepare the yeast dough with the replacement of all purpose flour entirely with wheat flour.
• After an hour the dough would have doubled.
• Preheat the oven to 170 degrees.
• Dust the work floor with a bit of flour and toss the dough ball on it.
• Knead for a minute and then divide into 3 balls.

•  Make them into tiny logs and place them on a greases baking tray. (this is basically to get small manageable loaves. If you like one big loaf, you do not have to divide into 3 balls, just make one dough log)

• Allow them to rise for another half hour or so. 



• Smear with a little oil and bake at 170 degrees for about 10 minutes or until the crust is golden brown.

• Take it out of the oven and smear a little milk on the top to make the crust soft and place on a wire rack to cool.

• Slice the bread only when the bread has completely cooled down, else it will crumble.
• Mildly heating in the microwave before eating would make it soft. It tastes great with Crunchy Peanut Butter!! :)