Bread Making 101: Whole Wheat Loaf

We love fresh made sandwich bread. Making your own at home provides a much healthier loaf than anything you can buy at the store, organic or not, and usually costs much less (especially if you're paying over $3 for an organic loaf.)
This recipe is super easy, it only has 6 ingredients, and turns out well. The combination of wheat and honey gives it a hearty, sweet taste.

Today we're going to cover Phase 1; Gathering and mixing your ingredients.















You'll need:
Whole Wheat Flour; I use Hard White Wheat since it still offers enough gluten to allow the bread to rise/bake well along with a lighter color and texture thanks to the white wheat as opposed to the red wheat.
Sea Salt; this is real salt, not fake salt like the table salts you'll usually find in your grocery store for about .65 cents a container.
Honey; I like locally harvested, raw honey.
Oil; I use organic sunflower oil for this bread, found at my local health food store at a very reasonable price. Stay away from conventional vegetable oils.
Yeast; I use Saf yeast and have found it to be the best.
Warm Water; We're on a well so our water is free of chemicals and additives. I've never baked with treated water so I don't know if it would make any difference.

This is going to make 1 large loaf plus a smaller loaf. We use the large one for sandwiches and the smaller one that night at dinner.

In a large bowl and in this order, pour in 1 1/4c warm water (water that's about 110 degrees,) add 1 1/4 c flour, add 1/2tsp salt, add 1/4 c oil, add 1/4 c honey, and sprinkle 1/2 TB yeast over top. Mix with wooden spoon until well mixed.
Gradually add (1 cup at a time) enough flour to bring your dough to a good consistency for kneading. I usually end up adding an additional 3-4 c of flour. It is going to still be sticky but not loose like batter.

Tomorrow we'll move to Phase 2: Kneading.