Since I got pregnant, I have been on the lazy bandwagon. Even though I had been working so hard to make so much of our food, I hit a brick wall when pregnant. I wasn’t ever strong enough to stand in the kitchen for so long, and even when I did manage to get in and get something done, I felt very nauseous, and I was never able to eat the foods that I had made.

I have been determined to get back to bread making because I wanted to find a 100% whole wheat bread recipe that really worked for me. We like to eat toast and sandwiches around here, and though I know that it is not possible to get as light a crumb with whole grain bread as with white bread, I knew it was possible to make a decent loaf of bread that is 100% whole grain. Besides, we don’t have any flour in the house except for that which I grind with my flour mill. I’m trying to get a hold on how much money we have been spending on food lately, so making my own bread out of the grains I currently have seems to be the solution.

I have a cookbook from Bob’s Red Mill. I love the company. It is based in Oregon, and whenever I am out of grains I head to the store and buy them in bulk. It works fantastically, and they really seem to be a company that is interested in helping the common man incorporate more whole grains into the diet. I’m using the basic recipe for whole wheat bread found here. It does require an overnight soak of the flour. This helps bring out nutrition in the bread as well as allowing the natural sweetness of the bread develop.

My only qualm with the recipe is that it takes 8 cups of flour, which is a lot, but it made 2 big loaves of bread that lasted us an entire week the last time. Besides, the ration of grains to flour is about 1:2, so it only take a little over 4 cups of wheat kernels to get 8 cups of flour.

The other benefit to the bread is that since I am now having to watch everything I eat closely because of the gestational diabetes, I don’t have to worry so much about the bread that I eat because it is all complex carbohydrates.

This is what my delicious bread looked like when I got it out of the oven today. These are not the greatest photos, but I’m still working on how to take fast photos of things in the kitchen that look good. I managed to get these photos done before Daphne reached up and took a bite out of the loaves!

The crumb of the bread looks really nice, and it’s got a nice shape to it for sandwiches. I am also impressed at how light it is for a whole grain bread. It doesn’t have the density of some of the other loaves I have made.