5-grain bread

After resigning to the apparent fact that the only place to find good and easy whole grain bread is at the grocery store, I finally came upon a good recipe, on the back of a King Arthur flour bag.

First, put on your belly bib. What, you don't have a belly bib?


Next, gather your ingredients. You will need the following:


1 1/4 cups milk (I use water and powdered milk)*
2 Tablespoons butter or margarine (I use oil)
3 Tablespoons honey or brown sugar
3 cups bread flour
1 cup oatmeal (I use Bob's Red Mill 5-grain mix)
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons yeast
*I try to use powdered milk in some recipes to save money. Funny story though, I ran out of my normal bulk WinCo powdered milk and Marcus was going to New Seasons so I asked him to check for some there. He was proud to find it and buy a bunch for me! Then at the check out he realized that at $8.99 a pound, he just spent almost $12 on the stuff. At home we realized that the New Seasons organic dry milk was MORE expensive than wet milk! The good news is that this "dry milk" is far superior to regular powdered milk. The bad news is we won't be buying it again!


I then add all the ingredients to my good ol' Breadman and choose the "dough" cycle. My machine likes the wet ingredients first. The dough is thick and not sticky and comes out looking like this:


The recipe says to use an oiled surface but I've always used a floured surface so that's what I use for this recipe too. It needs very little kneading, just a little punching-down and then shaping into a loaf:


I let it rise in a 200 degree oven, shut off, for about 20-30 minutes (or an hour or so at room temp) until it rises 1-2 inches above the rim of the pan. Then into a 350-375 degree oven for about 30-40 minutes, with a foil cover after 15 minutes of baking. The result:


A very very yummy loaf of bread with very little work, clean-up, time, or money (assuming you don't go to New Seasons for your powdered milk). ;o)

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