How To: Make simple bread from stored grain

You can make your own bread from scratch with wheat grain. You will have new appreciation for the ease in buying store brought bread but absolutely nothing beats having warm homemade bread. If you like to cook then baking your own wheat bread is a must.

Step 1

Put 3 cups of wheat grain in a stainless pot and cover two inches deep with water plus 3 tablespoons of vinegar. Soak overnight. If the grain soaks for 48 hours in a cool place it is still OK. The vinegar keeps it fresh.

Discard soak water, drain and rinse.

Step 2

Grind the grain in small batches in a blender or Vita-Mix. You will have to put a little water in the blender with the grain to get traction.

Step 3

Transfer the ground grain to a large mixing bowl. Stir in one and a half teaspoons of salt. Disperse the yeast in 1/4 cup of water and stir it in. Mix very well.

Step 4

Prepare flour to knead into the ground grain. Mix dry unbleached bread flour with salt in the proportion of 2 cups of flour to 1 teaspoon of salt. then mix enough flour-salt mixture into the dough to produce a workable consistency. It can be quite wet. Just make it stiff enough to handle.

Step 5

First Rising: In a warm place, allow the dough to rise for about an hour or until double in bulk.

Step 6

Punch down the dough and knead in a little more flour. Knead for about 3 minutes and form it into desired shape. Long sausage shapes work well.

Step 7

In a warm place, allow to rise until double in bulk.

Step 8

Bake the bread on a buttered cookie sheet in a preheated 400 degree oven for about 25 minutes, or until done.

Step 9

Using a Cuisinart

If you have ever made pastry dough in a Cuisinart you know that the dough balls up and circles around the processor bowl when it is ready. The grain behaves just like that. It gets ground up, and then it clumps together into a dough ball that circles around the bowl.