Honey Whole Wheat bread - what you should eat instead!

If you haven't read about Frankenbread, take a minute to do so. You'll understand why I was motivated to figure out a better way to have bread in the house!

And because I like problems to have solutions, here is my recipe, inspired by Great Harvest Honey Whole Wheat. If you have a Great Harvest bakery nearby, I highly recommend visiting. They grind their own flour, give excellent samples, and are generally awesome.

This is super easy if you have a KitchenAid or other stand mixer with dough hook attachment. If you don't, I'm sure you could knead it by hand for the same amount of time. A little more work, and a counter to clean up, but absolutely doable. 

Things I love about this bread:

• It is really, truly easy. 
• Makes the house smell amazing.
• It is real food - 5 non-weird ingredients.
• Satisfying and delicious - it has changed the way we eat bread. More open faced sandwiches, and a simple slice of this with butter elevates even the most ordinary salad to a wonderful dinner.
• My husband used to make himself 4 slices of toast, with this he has one. 
• It is inexpensive and has actual nutrition.

I've tweaked this recipe to fit my schedule, you can do the same for yours. You can adjust the amount of yeast depending on how long you have to let it rise. 

Typically I start this while my kids are eating their cereal in the morning. Dough is ready to rise by the time they are finished. 

Honey Whole Wheat Bread

Add to the bowl of your mixer, in this order:

• 2 c. warm water (however hot it comes out of your faucet is fine)
• 1/3 c. honey
• 1 tsp. yeast *
• 3-4 c. whole wheat flour
• 1.5 tsp salt 

Mix it with the dough hook until a sticky dough forms. You may have to add more flour, I like to get it to the point where it sort of all clings together in a lump instead of sticking to the sides of the bowl. Humidity can affect this, so add flour 1/2 c at a time.

 Once your dough has formed up, let that sucker knead on medium/medium low speed (maybe level 4 or 5) for a full 5 minutes. I stick nearby as this sometimes makes my mixer dance around on the counter a bit.

 Cover it with plastic wrap or a damp (and clean) towel. Forget about it for a while. This is where the yeast variation comes into play - if you use a bit more yeast (1.5 tsp instead of 1 tsp) it will rise faster. I sometimes like a slow rise so I do 1. Check back in an hour or so. The only way this part can really go wrong is if you leave it too long - like all day.

It should look like this when you come back - at least doubled in size:

 Now stab that sucker until it deflates! I kind of stab/stir it for just a minute and plop it into a loaf pan that has been sprayed with cooking spray:

Spread it out so it reaches all the corners and is relatively even:

Then spray just a bit of cooking spray on top, and loosely cover with the same plastic wrap from before. Let rise again for about an hour. This time, I would check after about 30 minutes. I find that if it gets too poofy it can be unwieldy to slice (but still delicious).

When it looks about like this, remove the plastic wrap and bake at 350 for 40 minutes.

Let it cool in the pan on the rack for about 10 minutes, then pop it out and let it cool completely.

So to review, we let the machine do the hard work (5 min kneading), and then it's basically a matter of periodically checking on it and maybe doing something to it for a minute. Easy peasy!

I store ours in a large ziplock bag, keeping it sealed shut. The bread will stay fresh for about a week, but to bu can fully appreciate how amazing your home smells.

I read somewhere that in today's food culture, baking your own bread is a truly revolutionary act. It's true. You are rejecting the need for a factory to provide yourself with honest, actual food. It is cheaper and better for you. You will want to share this with everyone.

Go on with your revolutionary self!


I store ours in a large ziplock bag, keeping it sealed shut. The bread will stay fresh for about a week, but to be honest, toward the end of that week I am mostly toasting it. And then, because it is actual food, unlike the monster that is still in my pantry - it will indeed go bad. :)

*a note about buying yeast:
It is cheapest in those little packets if you're just trying this out. But I think you are likely to get addicted to the beauty of fresh bread (as I did), so when you're ready, buy your yeast in bulk at Costco or somewhere similar. You will pay less there for 1 or 2 pounds than you will spend on the jar at the grocery store. Keep it in the freezer or fridge and you can measure it out yourself instead of the little packets.