Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread

As both of us are sandwich lovers and we especially love our sandwich to go with whole wheat bread/whole grain bread, we have decided to try baking some whole wheat sandwich bread this week. Hubby being daring and adventurous decided to use molasses instead of honey as called for by the original recipe. I would say it's a two-edged sword using the molasses. On one hand it gives a more chewy texture to the bread, on another hand it makes kneading much more difficult as it was just too sticky to the hand. We have to add about 3/4 cup of white flour during kneading to get the perfect dough. Anyhow, the sleepless night, sweat and effort are all paid off when we had our first homemade whole wheat sandwich bread for breakfast this morning.

Ingredients:

• 3 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1/4 cup molasses
• 1 cup warm water
• 1 1/4 teaspoons salt
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 tablespoon active dry yeast

Steps:

1. Combine a cup of warm water with the salt, the molasses, the yeast, the oil and the milk in a large bowl. Stir until all well mixed.
2. Mix in the flour and stir until the dough starts to pull away from the bowl.
3. Place the dough on a lightly flour surface and knead the dough for 8-10 minutes or until the dough become smooth. Add flour as needed to make the dough less sticky.
4. On another large bowl, grease the bowl with a small amount of oil. Place the dough in the bowl and flip the dough to cover the dough with oil.
5. Cover the bowl with a towel and allow the dough to rise for an hour in a warm place.
6. After an hour, remove the dough from the bowl and place on a lightly floured surface. Shape the dough into a 8 inches log and place into a lightly 9 x 5 grease loaf pan.
7. Cover the loaf pan with lightly oil plastic wrap and let it rise for another hour or until the dough raises approximately 1 inch above the pan.
8. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and place the loaf pan in center of oven for about 40 minutes. After 20 minutes of baking, loosely cover the pan with aluminum foil.
9. You can test if the bread is done by thumping the bottom of the bread and it should sound hollow.
   
10. Let the bread cool on a wire rack for 10-15 minutes before slicing it.
    

Enjoy a healthy wholesome bread. In the coming weeks, we will definitely try baking this bread again but will try using honey then. We will let you know the difference then. Stay tune!