Baking Day!

Wednesday is baking day at our house. I usually make a batch of bread (3 loaves) every week and also often a dessert and a breakfast bread for Thursday. Today I made Whole wheat bread, Zucchini bread, Chocolate zucchini cake and zucchini crisp. I plan on freezing 2 loaves of the whole wheat bread, 1 of the zucchini bread, and part of the cake to use later. I like to do all of my baking for the week at once because it cuts down on the number of dirty dishes as well as the amount of time my oven is on. I was able to run the oven for only a little over an hour this morning. The way I do it is to stir up my bread fairly early in the morning and let it rise. When that is ready to go into its pans to rise again then I will stir up the next item (this morning - cake) in the same bowl( I don't wash it, I just scrape it out good), using the same measuring cups (a one cup measure for dry ingredients and a 2 cup measuring cup for the wet), after I got that in its pan and in the oven, I again used the same bowl for zucchini bread and then following that I made the crisp. I am able to get that much in my oven at one time but the bread was pretty much ready to come out when the crisp went in. We love baked goods and doing it all at once like that really saves me time and energy.
Here is my recipe for Whole Wheat Bread:

1. 8 cups Whole Wheat flour (I fresh grind mine using a "Whisper Mill" and grain that we buy very cheaply from a grain elevator)


2. 2-3 cups of White flour


3. 2 tablespoons yeast (or 2 packages, I buy mine in bulk as it is a lot cheaper)


4. 31/2 cups warm water


5. 1/3 cup of sugar


6. 1/4 cup oil


7. 2 teaspoons salt

In a large bowl combine 4 cups whole wheat flour, yeast and sugar. Then add the warm water (around 120-130 degrees) and oil and mix well. Add the salt and start adding the rest of the flour a cup or 2 at a time. When it gets to hard to stir put the dough on a lightly floured surface and knead in enough of the remaining flour to make a moderately stiff dough. Knead 6-8 minutes. Place in greased bowl and place a cover over it and let it rise until double. (1- 1 1/2 hours). Then punch dough down and place in 3 greased bread pans and let rise again. Bake in a 375 degree oven for around 35 minutes or until bread is done.

This has been a staple at our house, I hope you enjoy it too!