Honey Wheat Bread

As promised, here is my Honey Wheat Bread recipe. You will love this bread and never want to go back to the store bought stuff again. Having a grilled cheese or BLT on this bread is pure food heaven.


What you'll need to get started:
3 cups warm water (about 110 degrees)
2 (.25 oz) packages of active dry yeast (or about 4 1/2 tsps bulk yeast)
1/3 cup honey
5 cups bread flour
3 tbs butter, melted
1/3 cup honey (again)
1 tbs salt
3.5 cups whole wheat flour
more butter (to spread on top)
9x5 in. pan

What to do:

1. First, activate your yeast. Plop all those tsps of yeast into the 3 cups of warm water and set aside for about 5-10 minutes.
2. Then mix 5 cups of bread flour with the yeast-y water combo and 1/3 cup honey and stir well. Set aside for about 30 minutes, or until big and bubbly.

3. Mix in 3 tbs melted butter, another 1/3 cup honey, salt and about 2 cups wheat flour. Mix well.
4. Place this mix onto a floured surface and knead, adding more flour until it's only slightly sticky, but not stuck to the table/counter. Once it reaches this point, I like to knead it for a good 10 minutes to really get the gluten going.

5. Place the dough in a greased bowl. Plop it in and the turn it once over to coat it with grease. Cover with a towel and let rise until it has doubled.
6. Punch down (I give it a quick 3 jabs), shape, and cut into your loaves. Using a (greased) 9x5 pan it makes 3 loaves. I prefer to bake them all at once and then freeze the baked bread, but you can freeze the dough and use it later.
7. Let the dough in the pan rise again until the dough has topped the pan by about an inch. It will look like a nice loaf of sandwich bread!

8. Bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes. Then brush the tops with some melted butter and let cool.
9. Once cooled, I wrap mine in plastic wrap and then in foil, if I freeze them.

A few side notes:

This is not a hard recipe at all, but it does take several hours since the bread is left to rise 3 different times. I usually try to do it on a Sunday when I'm doing things around the house. 

The bread rises much quicker if your house is warm(er). So I usually don't have the A/C pumping when I make it.