Homemaker Monday: 100% Whole Wheat Bread Machine Bread

Welcome to...

We're so glad you came!
If you're new and would like to participate in this carnival today, please check out the rules and regs HERE. Otherwise, enjoy YOURS, MINE and OURS!

YOURS: This week's "YOURS" was posted by RAE over at My Life on the East Coast. I loved reading this post because it reminded me that life isn't all about having an immaculate house and a completely controlled environment at all times. But what if the kids want to get out all the blankets and make forts?


Read what Rae does about that HERE. She even has an argument with herself, an angel on one shoulder, devil on the other so to speak. It cracked me up because I have had the same argument with myself all too often. I just never thought of writing it!
Rae ends her post by sharing some moments of familial bliss involving these...


and these...


Enjoy the entire post HERE and thank you very much, Rae!

MINE: Our Daily Bread

This is the way we get our bread so early in the morning...


There as nothing I love more than waking up to the smell of freshly-baked bread. Well, there are a few things I love more, but not too many. And in order to combat the miriad unhealthy foods my kids are exposed to, we like to grind our own flour, with this...


Almost every night one of us puts these ingredients...


...in our bread machine in this order:
1 1/2 cups raw milk (If you plan on leaving this is the machine overnight and you don't have raw milk, then use 1 1/2 cups water. We will add powdered milk in later. Otherwise the milk will could spoil. Raw milk doesn't spoil, but goes sour, which is okay when you're making bread.)
3 tablespoons oil
3 tablespoons honey or molasses
2 teaspoons salt
4 cups whole wheat flour
(If you used water earlier, now add 1/3 cup plus 3 tablespoons powdered milk. Thanks for the reconstitution table, Hillbilly Housewife!)
3 tablespoons vital wheat gluten (you can get it at Walmart and I'll tell you about it in a minute)
2 1/2 teaspoons yeast, placed in a well dug into the flour, like this...


Vital wheat gluten in the key ingredient in making good whole wheat bread. It is the part of the flour that allows it to bind to itself. Without it, the bread can turn out crumby, literally, and who likes crumby bread? Check out how wonderful this loaf looks.


That's a compliment to the bread machine, not me. I just put the stuff in and the machine does all the work. You've gotta love modern technology!

One last thing. I store the paddle in the bread pan unattached to the pole in order to make sure it has dried completely. However, there have been more than a few times that I have put all the ingredients in the pan only to realize once it's too late that I haven't attached the paddle! I then have to carefully dig through the four cups of flour, try to find the paddle at the bottom of the milk and try to affix it to the pole. Not fun! Once my daughter did the same thing, but didn't realize it until after we got home from church expecting a warm and wonderful loaf for lunch. It smelled great, but when we looked into the pan, it was a cooked mess of boiled milk and flour still sitting on the top; utter disappointment after a long day at church!

I know I said one last thing before, but I really mean it this time. One last thing...Going back a bit, if you make sure to pour the oil into the tablespoon first, and THEN the honey, the honey will slip off the spoon like nobody's business, like this...


Hope you enjoy!

OURS: Now it's your turn! Don't forget to leave a comment. It's easier for me to enter you into the contest that way! And make sure to check out everyone else's post and leave encouraging comments for them. We all love comments!