Home made bread smells and tastes divine. Luckily it is not as hard as I had imagined it would be. I found this recipe via my friend Sussana on tasty.co that I adapted to bake my first ever loaf of bread. What you need of course is a lot of patience as the process take close to 4 hours in all but what you get is worth the wait. After all patience pays. Ok, no more gyan lets get into the recipe.

Ingredients

• 1 cup Whole Wheat Flour
• ¾ cup All Purpose Flour or Maida
• Warm water – about 3 tablespoons to activate the yeast and rest to knead the dough
• 1½ teaspoons honey
• 1½ teaspoons dry yeast
• 2 tablespoons oil (I used Olive Oil but any vegetable oil works)
• 1½ teaspoons salt

Method

Activate the yeast by mixing some warm water, honey and yeast together. Cover and for five to ten minutes.

After five minutes, the look of the mix will change to look like this. There are small bubbles formed on the surface and the mix looks bloated.

To this add wheat flour, all-purpose flour, oil and salt and some warm water as needed and and mix until the dough comes together in a non sticky ball. You dough will look like this now:

Form the dough into a ball and transfer to a greased bowl (I used olive oil) making sure the oil coats the dough on both sides. Cover the bowl with a wet towel and let it stand in a warm place for 1 hour. After an hour the dough would have doubled in size.

Now take the dough out on a flat surface dusted with some some whole wheat flour and press the dough into a square shape and fold into a small rectangle shape and place it in a greased sandwich mold. Cover the mold and set aside for one hour. Here is the how the dough must be shaped:

After one hour the dough would have risen to look like this:

Preheat the oven at 190 degrees for 10 minutes and place the mold inside (the oven will be hot please take care) and bake for 55 minutes till the bread has a brown top. The bread now looks like this:

As soon as you switch off the oven, wear gloves and remove the bread and allow to cool for one hour on a wire rack.

The bread may appear hard but after an hour you can slice it and enjoy – this is how the final product looks like:

Notes:

• My cup holds about 200 grams. However, any cup will work. Just follow the recipe.
• Ensure the water used to activate the yeast is warm, very hot water can kill the yeast.
• I have not given a measure for the warm water as this will depend on the quantity of dough you are kneading.
• You can also use only All Purpose Flour for this dish. However, only Whole Wheat Flour might make the bread dense so a mix is advisable.

Do let me know if you tried the recipe and how it went. Have fun the whole house smelt divine and the bread tastes great too.