Friday, July 3, 2009

100% Whole Wheat Granola Bread (bread machine)


Background: This is my own made up bread machine recipe. It makes a 2lb loaf of 100% whole wheat bread. This bread is so dense that they used it to build the second temple (I know cause I'm studying archeology). You can make all sorts of substitutions, I'll mention some in the directions below. My family love this bread. It's great toasted with Marmite.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups water1 3/4 tsps salt
2 TBs honey2 TBs molasses
4 cups whole wheat flour2 TBs vital wheat gluten
2 1/2 tsps rapid dry yeast1 cup granola

Directions: Jo makes us granola from time to time. Maybe one day she will let me post the recipe. It's not too sweet and has lots of nuts.
I've made this with whole wheat flour and with rye flour and with any combination of the above. It always seems to work. You can use any kind of granola or nuts or dried fruit. Store bought granola tends to be sweet, so I then cut down on half the honey. We often don't have molasses, so I use whatever jam we have instead. Basically anything sweetish to offset the dry taste of the nuts. The vital wheat gluten (or gluten flour) is indeed vital. If you don't use this the bread comes out all dry and crumbly. You can buy this in Israel at any of the specialty cooking stores (there are 4 in Raanana alone).

To make this is simple. Just chuck all the ingredients except the granola into the bread maker pan and set it to bake Whole Wheat bread. I usually also like the dark crust option.
Now you have a choice of when to put in the granola. If you put it in from the start it will get crunched up fine and the bread will have a relatively uniform texture. We like big chunks in our bread so I wait till the "add stuff" beep (45 mins into the cycle on our machine) and then add the granola. 1 cup is a lot to add and its often better to add it a few minutes before the beep, just to make sure you don't end up with a clumps of unincorporated granola left after baking. That's it. It's good stuff.

No comments: