Bread Machine Freshly-Ground Whole Wheat Bread

As promised, I'm working on more recipes using freshly ground wheat. This time around, I used a hard red wheat that I bought on Amazon.

Actually, I was looking for soft wheat, which I'll be using for biscuits or maybe cake ... but then I saw a 10-pound 2-pack of soft white wheat and hard red wheat from Palouse and decided to get that.

I didn't need biscuits right away, even though I was anxious to try that soft wheat, but I needed a quick loaf of bread. So I decided to open the red wheat and give it a try. It's not actually red, but it's a darker color than the white wheat - which isn't white. It's more of a tan color. Just in case you were curious.

Anyway, I ground some red wheat to make the bread. As usual, I added some bread flour, because that's how I like to make it. And then it went into the bread machine, because I was being lazy.

Okay, I was also a little curious how my freshly-ground wheat flour would behave in the bread machine.

Turns out, the bread worked out just fine. Interesting thing, though, was that I measured a cup of wheat berries rather than weighing. Then I ground it.

Right off the bat, I saw that I had a lot more than a cup of flour. I weighed 5 ounces of flour for this recipe and had a bit over 2 ounces left. So, a cup of wheat berries fluffed up to make a little over 1 1/2 cups of flour.

That's why it's really important to weigh flour an not rely on volumes. And particularly not the volume of wheat berries versus the volume of flour.

Of course, if I had weighed the berries and then ground them, I wouldn't have even thought about the fluffing of the flour. Another interesting lesson about flour learned. That's what I love about cooking. There's always something new.

Bread Machine Freshly-Ground Whole Wheat Bread

1 cup water
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon Red Star active dry yeast
5 ounces freshly ground red wheat flour
7 ounces bread flour (I use King Arthur)
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons butter

Put it all in your bread machine. Press buttons. You know how you bread machine works. Beep. Boop. Beep.

When the bread is done, remove it from the bread machine and let it cool completely on a rack before slicing.

Note: You certainly can use other types of yeast, but I prefer Red Star Active Dry for most things. If you use a different brand of active dry, you'll probably need to let it soften in the water for a short while before mixing. Red Star's active dry has a very small pellet size, so it doesn't need to be softened first. You can also use bread machine yeast or instant yeast.

Check out my first post about freshly ground flour here.

This is NOT a sponsored. post. I got the grain mill for use in my previous post (but my obligation with them is over now), but I bought the wheat berries with my own cash. Okay, Amazon takes credit cards. But still. My money.

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