A Great Recipe For Wholewheat Bread

I love wholewheat bread & would choose it over refined white bread any day. The problem is that we cannot get the ingredients to make it easily here ? things like wholewheat or rye flour, flax seeds and bran. Also, these things can be quite heavy to bring back in your luggage when traveling (and can you imagine me trying to explain to Customs why I was carrying a 5 kg bag of wholewheat flour in my luggage ?!)

So, on a recent cross border road trip to Nairobi, Kenya I stocked up on as many of these ingredients as I could ? and proceeded to bake wholewheat bread to my hearts content ! (But not to my husband?s I?m afraid ? as he?ll take the refined white stuff over the healthier wholewheat version any day !)

Here?s the tasty, easy recipe which I use for a basic wholewheat loaf. This bread is great as sandwich bread but should be eaten within a couple of days of making it -:


Wholewheat Bread (from ?The Cape Malay Cookbook? by Faldela Williams)

500 gm Wholewheat Flour* (I also add ½ cup sunflower seeds)
5 ml Salt
10 ml instant dried Yeast
30 ml sunflower Oil
20 ml Honey (or golden Syrup)
325 ml lukewarm Water

Place flour & salt in a bowl. Add instant dried yeast & stir. Add oil & honey (or syrup), then water. Mix to a soft dough, & knead until elastic. Form into a smooth loaf shape & place in a well-greased loaf tin. Cover with plastic & leave to rise until doubled in bulk (45 minutes to an hour). Bake at 220?C/425?F/Gas mark 7 for 30 minutes, then reduce temperature to 200?C/400?F/Gas Mark 6 and bake for a further 10 ? 15 minutes. To test if loaf is baked, tap it on top ? it should sound hollow. Cool in tin for a few minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Makes 1 large loaf.

Note:
Active dried yeast may also be used. Dissolve yeast in 150 ml lukewarm water with 2 ml sugar & leave until bubbling, about 15 minutes. Add to dry ingredients, with remaining water, & proceed as above.