Whole Wheat Bread

Forgive this diversion into the culinary world but Olga and I want to share a bread machine recipe with those who are interested. Please skip this posting, otherwise.

We bought an Oster Bread Machine after Christmas (on sale, naturally) and started making bread. White bread proved little challenge; we were successful from the get-go. Whole wheat bread, on the other hand, required some experimentation and departure from standard recipes we found; loaves were generally short and dense.

One issue we identified quickly was that volumetric measurements were quite variable and a source of inconsistency in the recipes. We came up with a standard weight of a cup of flour and converted ounces or cups of water to mass weights as well. We also decided to use weight measurements in grams rather than ounces (our kitchen scales do both English and metric weights).

Therefore; 1-cup of flour is 126.5 grams and 1-cup of water (8 ounces by volume) is 8.33 weight ounce or 236 grams (we assumed standard temperature and pressure for the conversion). Flour and water
are the two critical ingredients in our bread making.

The recipe for 100% whole wheat bread:

383 grams of Water
1 TBSP Olive Oil  (11 grams)
558 grams of Whole Wheat Flour (Gold Medal or King Arthur brands work for us)
32 grams Vital Wheat Gluten Flour (Bob's Red Mill brand)
1/3 cup packed Brown Sugar (78 grams)
1 1/2 tsp Salt (we use Kosher Salt)
3 tsp Yeast (we use Fleischmann's Bread Machine Yeast)-store in refrigerator

Put into bread machine in order shown. Place pan in bread machine before adding yeast and make a shallow "well" for the yeast. Select "Whole Wheat" cycle (#3), "medium" crust color, and "2-Lb" loaf. Push start to begin the bread making cycle. Look into the pan after it has mixed for a few minutes and use a spatula to scrape walls if needed.

Good luck if you try it. Don't forget to remove from bread machine after 3 hours and 48 minutes!