Wholemeal bread - a triple batch

I love making bread! Once you master it...your confidence grows even more to try other breads. When I make bread, I usually form it into rolls which is easily divided come meal time. Some favourites at home are our Kefir Milk Bread Rolls, Ground Soy Linseed and Almond bread and even the good old traditional white bread. I've even had a go at making Baguettes, but these recipes on my blog have all been using my bread machine in some way. I'm not sure I want to use my bread machine any more, as one thing that has always bothered me is the amount of dough for the time invested.......

I want to get the family used to eating my home-made bread on a day to day basis, but  it seems that old habits are hard to break when it comes to the lunch time sandwich......(And I have that extra challenge of making it every day myself, although I think it may be a timing challenge more than anything). When I was a Nanny back in my late teens, I made all the family's bread, but these days, I only make it roughly once a week, and on special occasions.....and it's always gone way too quick! 


For my birthday on Friday I was blessed to received a grain mill attachment for my Kenwood Mixer. So over the weekend I have been playing with the mill and also my lovely dough hook. Ahhhhh the joys of kneading are slipping my mind very quickly as I watch yet another big batch of dough working its magic in the Kenwood. "Maybe I can do this challenge" I think to myself. Maybe it won't be that hard if I don't have to knead the dough by hand............Maybe my family CAN enjoy the lovely aroma, flavour and goodness of fresh bread everyday; like the same that has come out of my kitchen for the last 3 consecutive days.

I've tried three recipes so far for Wholemeal bread...all bulk recipes to suit my Kenwood. I discovered in the instruction manual that the Kenwood can comfortably cope with 1.36kg of flour in making up a bread dough. This gives me more than one loaf of bread for the same amount of prep time. Brilliant!! I'm all for batch cooking as you know.

As I had trouble sourcing grain on Friday morning...I only bought 500g of wheat from the local health food store. This cost me $2.10....so there must be a cheaper way to buy wheat.....but seeing it was the first time I was using my new grain mill....I dismissed the price. (just this once). I have to be sensible about this too, seeing I still have plenty of bulk flour in my store cupboard to use up; but this also gives me time to find a cheaper supplier of fresh wheat, spelt, chia, quinoa, hemp or other grains.
Any suggestions for (bulk) grain suppliers for the Illawarra area would be greatly appreciated!! 
Or cost effective postable quantities ......

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Wholemeal bread........a triple batch! This recipe comes from the recipe book that came with my Kenwood Chef Major....I just tripled the recipe to suit.

1125 grams Wholemeal Flour
225 grams plain White Flour
6 teaspoons salt
4 1/2 teaspoons dried yeast
900 mls lukewarm water

Wow, 5 ingredients.....DS20 looked around for a recycled bread bag from a store bought bread and had to count the ingredient list....19 ingredients....Hmmmm there's something to be said there!

Sorry, I've been blabbing on a bit with this post, but it's been a while since I chatted with you all...lol...so......

Back to the recipe.....
Place the flours, salt and yeast in the Kenwood bowl, and using the dough hook on the minimum speed....gradually add the lukewarm water. Mix on minimum speed until a soft dough is formed.

Knead for 1 minute on minimum speed, then 4 to 5 minutes on speed 1. You are looking for the dough to be smooth (as smooth as wholemeal grain can look anyway)...and elastic looking.  Once the dough is kneaded....cover with lightly oiled plastic film and leave to rise. Best risen in a warm place....If it's a cold day, the perfect climate to rise a bread dough is in the warmth of a closed car parked in the sun.

Once the dough doubles in size........

Knock it back and roll out onto a lightly floured bench. Knead it for a few minutes to knock the air out of the dough.

This is when you shape the dough to what breads you want.....You could make one huge free-form loaf like this......

But this mixture was enough for two medium loaves of bread and 8 dinner rolls. The other night I also made 1 extra large loaf of bread and 10 rolls.

So it's really just up to your imagination or family needs. I can tell you though...that if you have just enough bread rolls to accompany a meal....there's no fights over anyone sneaking an extra slice when your not looking. We have 5 people in our family, so I always make up rolls in lots of 5. The rolls are shared out evenly, but also allocated for meals and NOT hungry teenager snacks. ...It can be frustrating to see all that hard work to be gobbled up in 5 minutes, just because your not in the kitchen when your boys come home....I'm sure you've been there, even with biscuits or cake too.

(Hubby is away through the week now...so this lot is two batches of four...Sorry Hubby you miss out on this lot) .....I did give Hubby a huge loaf to take with him though...... and have since been told that the lady he is staying with insisted they sat down and had a slice immediately ....with my home-made blackberry jam. I'm glad you like my bread Lola!

Weighing the dough out evenly for rolls
makes them bake all at the same size.

Preheat the oven now to 230 degrees celcius.....and allow the shaped dough to rise again....

Ready for the 2nd rise

Now add the rolls to the oven, these will be risen and ready before the loaves.....Bake the rolls for roughly 15 to 20 minutes or until they sound hollow when tapped on the bottom.

Once the rolls are removed from the oven, place the larger tins in and bake for 10 minutes before turning the oven down to 200 degrees....and baking for a further 20 to 30 minutes.  Remove tins from the oven and take the bread out of the tin immediately....allow the bread to cool on a wire rack.

The wire rack is hidden beneath the tea-towel.
I also covered the loaves with the other half of the tea-towel
allowing them to cool before putting away.

I'm loving this wholemeal bread, I can't wait to source some wheat grain, so I can grind my own flour fresh for each loaf.


Do you have a grain mill? If so, what other ingredients do you mill?