Whole-grain bread

Since my family is (basically) vegetarian, I pay more attention to nutrition balance. Whole wheat bread is far more nutritious (rich in vitamins, etc.) than white-grain rice. Because this staple food has quite high nutrition value, simple meals which consist of only slices of bread and cheese should easily suffice even young children's important growth stages.

There are more reasons to bake at home:

- My daughter/I do not take sugar, so that bread we find at shops are not our options.

- It is very hard to find a quite heavy bread like ours or German.

Allright, there are lots discussions about nutrition. But a man do no live only on bread. Well, such difficult discussions should be discussed else-where. I might cover a relatively simple topic at some point...

A friend (born by Norwegian parents and bred in Japan) of mine. The recipe cannot be simpler for bread I think. But it requires me good coule of hours. So I usually bake breads on my days off.

Ingredients are

• 6 cups of whole-grain wheat flour
• 3 cups of water (2 cups if you make white-flour)
• 6 tea-spoonful of dry yeast
• a big spoonful of salt
• around 3-5 big-spoonful olive oil
• butter (to grease forms)

Obviously you need forms and a oven (I use electronic micro-oven).

1. Mix 3 cups of warm water (around 45 – 50 degree celsius), dry yeast for around 10-15 min. You will see foam covering the surface then. Mixing in small amount of honey would help yeast's activation process.
2. Add flour, salt, live oil and kneel.
3. Let it raise for around 1 hour (place the bowl on a warm something if not in summer).
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. Tear the dough into tennis-ball size, punch around three of them into a form.
5. Bake for 30 min at 200 degree celsius.
6. Cool for 1 hour at room temperature.

I recently bake once in every two weeks. I bake enough for two weeks. Some are packed in plastic bags and frozen till we need. Some stay outside for the next day's breakfast or lunch. Some goes to the fridge.