Edith's Whole Wheat Bread

My Great Aunt Edith Whittle lived on a farm in Kimberly Idaho where the Olsens settled after immigrating from Denmark in the early part of the last century. I am sure the my older children remember the birthday cards that she sent to them every year with a dollar. That one small act helped them remember her. She was very kind to us and when we went to visit her she had a picture of my sister Jan and I on the dresser in her upstairs bedroom. When we were at her home we milked the goats and poured the cream on our breakfast cereal. What a treat! Here is her recipe for Whole Wheat Bread.

Beat together:
2 cups of prepared powdered milk, scalded
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup soft margarine
4 tsp. salt
Add and beat well:
4 eggs

Mix together and let sit until yeast bubbles, about 5 minutes.
1 cup warm water
1 Tbs. brown sugar
2 Tbs. yeast

Pour into milk mixture and add 7 cups whole wheat flour. Mix together well, the dough will be sticky. Add 1 1/2 cups of white bread flour. Put in greased bowl and let rise for 1 1/2 hours until double in bulk. Knead down and let rise again. Mold into 2 loaves of bread. Let rise for 1/2 hour and then bake 45 minutes in a 350 degree oven. Brush with melted butter while hot.


Today we made stone ground wheat bread. Jayden, Ashlyn, Peyton, and Cameron were over at my house for cooking lessons on how to make bread. It takes a couple hours to make bread so we made Marshmallow Popcorn Balls while we waited. Afterwards the kids enjoyed the treats they made.

I have a lot of hard red winter wheat in storage but you can find wheat berries at the store. Bob's Red Mill sells wheat berries in the grocery store or online but you need to have a wheat grinder to make the flour.

Jayden was fascinated to find that my very old Magic Mill wheat grinder, which my mother gave to me to use over 20 years ago and I tried to give it back to her several times but she wouldn't take it, had stones inside it to grind the wheat into flour.
Jayden poured wheat into the grinder and was amazed to find after it went into the little hole that flour came out into the tray at the bottom. We made about 7 cups of flour with the 5 cups of wheat that we put into the grinder. We had a discussion about how wheat was ground a long time ago and how people took their grain to the miller to have it made into flour. Peyton said that her best friend has the last name of Miller and I said that their ancestor probably was a miller a long time ago.

After we finished making the flour we started putting the bread together. First of all we proofed the yeast in 1 cup of lukewarm water and 1 Tbs. of brown sugar. The children watched the yeast bubble and grow and then put it into the milk mixture. Cracking the eggs was a favorite thing to do and each child got to put one into the mix then Cameron added the flour.

After mixing in the wheat flour the dough is very sticky and gooey so I add white bread flour to give the dough some gluten and make it stick together. This helps the solve some of the stickiness problem too.

I use my Kitchen Aide to knead the dough for 10 minutes which is very necessary to give the bread the right texture. Letting the dough rise is the next step. I let the dough sit in a warm place an hour until it doubles in bulk. I know when the dough reaches the top of my bowl that it is double.

There is a trick to making a beautiful loaf of bread and so I demonstrated how to do it with the first loaf and then Jayden did the second loaf. I thought she did a very good job.

First the bread is rolled with a rolling pin to get all the big bubbles out. We made sure that it was put on a well floured surface because the bread dough is still a little bit sticky. I turned the dough over a couple times to make sure that it was floured. Jayden rolled it into a rectangle and then rolled it the long way to form the bread. After the roll was made Jayden pinched the end to the dough to seal the loaf. Then she turned the ends towards the center and pinched them to the loaf. She did a really gread job putting it into the greased loaf pan.

Look at how well formed Jayden made her loaf. I couldn't tell the difference between the two loaves. The bread was given time to rise for a half an hour then it was ready to go into the oven. The smell of bread baking permeated the house and we couldn't wait to taste it.