15 Easy Whole Wheat Bread Recipes

May 15, 2020

Follow a few simple rules, learn some how-to tips and tricks for making homemade whole wheat bread recipes, and bread making will become second nature. Be one with the bread! You will find below 15 Easy Whole Wheat Bread Recipes to try with the family!

Whole Wheat Bread

These whole wheat bread recipes use some ingredients that may or may not look familiar to you. They can all be purchased in a natural food store, health food cooperative, buying club, or a major supermarket chain. These recipes might also mention vital wheat gluten, instant yeast, kneading bread by hand, mixer or bread machine, and which oven temperature to use, so let’s have a look at what they are.

What is Vital Wheat Gluten?

Vital wheat gluten is dried and milled to a powder and usually added to ordinary flour dough. This improves the whole-grain dough to rise and helps the bread’s texture and chewiness. These heavy doughs must be worked vigorously if they are to rise to the top of the pan. Kneading heavy bread by hand would be laborious and tiring, so a bread machine or stand mixer would be useful for this process. Bread flour is the ideal flour to use for bread making as it has a higher percentage of gluten already in it.

Using Instant Dry Yeast To Make Whole Wheat Bread

There are three popular types of yeast for baking for making bread. Active dry yeast like the Fleischmann’s yeast sold in little packets. Bakers yeast, which is a live wet yeast sold in blocks in the grocery store’s refrigerated aisle. Instant dry yeast made by Saf-instant yeast. Once instant yeast is opened, it should be sealed in an airtight container and stored in the refrigerator or freezer.

This is the yeast used in most modern commercial recipes. Because it’s instant yeast, it doesn’t have to be dissolved in water first. Saf-instant yeast gets added to the rest of the dry ingredients and mixed and kneaded into the bread dough. Also, by using instant yeast, the final bread dough only has to rise once. No more punching down the dough and waiting for it to rise a second time.

Kneading Bread By Hand, Mixer or Bread Machine

Because whole grain bread doughs are usually heavy, and most batches make four loaves, it would be easier to use a stand mixer or a bread machine. The whole wheat bread dough can be kneaded by hand. It will take approximately 10-15 minutes or so of heavy kneading with the heels of the hands to develop the dough fully. If using a bread machine, check the manufactures’ instructions.

Oven Temperatures And Bread Machines

Bread baked in loaf pans generally bakes at lower temperatures (350-375 degrees F.) for a longer period of time (30-45 minutes). Hearth bread that is baked in brick ovens or on stones is baked at higher temperatures (400-450 degrees F.) for shorter periods of time (25-40 minutes) depending on how large the loaf is and how heavy the dough. Always check the recipe before baking. If using a bread machine, check the manufactures’ instructions on how to bake it.