Homemade Wholemeal Bread | Whole Wheat Bread

Today’s recipe is a super simple one, which is perfect for all of you who are getting into baking – especially bread baking. 

I know that bread baking can initially seem like a long and rigorous process but it’s actually pretty straight forward. You only need a handful of ingredients and a bit of time (let’s be honest, considering that most of us are staying home) you can take the time and give this loaf a bash. 

From my experience, wholemeal bread can feel heavy and quite stodgy but this recipe makes for quite a soft and light loaf, which is 100% better than the commercially available stuff. 

If you have the time, you should certainly look into making bread from scratch. It’s worth the time you put in and is by far more cost effective compared to something at a bakery – use your time wisely and get baking!  

Anyway, let’s get started, shall we?

 

Ingredients:

500g Wholemeal bread flour.

40g Fresh yeast.

8g Salt.

30g Shortening (Trex or Crisco will work well).

10g Granulated sugar. 

310ml Water, warmed.

Method:

Start by doing some prep work. Weigh up all the ingredients, prepare your loaf tin (if needed) and get any equipment you may need ready, such as a mixing bowl.

To start on the dough, take your mixing bowl and place in the wholemeal flour along with the salt and give the two a brief mix, just to incorporate the two.

You can then go ahead and add in the white shortening, granulated sugar, fresh yeast and water.

If you’re using a stand mixer like me, I recommend using a low speed to start with, for roughly 2 minutes, then crank the speed up to a medium low and mix for a further 6 minutes – that’s 8 minutes in total. 

By this point, the dough should be well formed and the bowl should be pretty clean (just a bit of residual flour at the top of the bowl).

Give the dough a brief knead on a floured surface, then place the dough into a lightly oiled mixing bowl, cover with clingfilm and leave somewhere warm to proof for around hour or until the dough has roughly doubled in size.

Once the dough has had time to proof and is ready, you can remove it from the bowl and place it onto a floured surface and knock it back. This is simply the process of removing the gasses that have built up in the dough during the first proof and shows that the yeast is working.

You can then bring the dough back into a ball shape by folding it in on itself. Then you can go ahead and roll the ball into a fat sausage shape, roll it out large enough so it fits into your loaf tin lengthwise.

Place the dough into your loaf tin and loosely cover with clingfilm and leave to proof for a second time for about 30-45 minutes or until the dough has doubled in size again.

While the dough is proofing, you can preheat your oven to 230˚/445˚f. 

Once the second proof is done, you can go ahead and remove the clingfilm from on top of the dough and place the loaf into the preheated oven and bake for 30-35 minuses or until the crust has become well coloured.

If I remember anything from college is that to test if the bread is baked, you simply remove it from the tin and tin it upside and tap the bottom. You’re looking for a hollow sound, that means it’s fully baked.

That’s all for today guys, I hope you enjoyed. If you did, don’t forget to share this recipe with your family and friends and enjoy it. I’ll be back soon with another blog post and YouTube video, so join me then. In the meanwhile, don’t forget to check out my other social’s – Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube. The YouTube tutorial will be linked down below.