Bread Machine Wheat Bread

As some of you know, I recently acquired a brand new, still the box Oster bread machine for $30 (purchased via craigslist from a seller who said it had been sitting in her garage for years). It was a little dusty, but, after a thorough cleaning, I set about learning to use it.

My family generally prefers wheat/whole grain breads. The exceptions here would be French, Italian and Hawaiian breads. In those varieties, we prefer white. However, for our daily toast and sandwich needs, a good whole wheat or multigrain bread usually wins. So, my major goal when I purchased the machine was to settle upon a recipe that could serve as a replacement for our packaged wheat breads. I am not sure how much money this saves us, but I know that the list of ingredients in my homemade bread is much shorter than what I see on most packaged bread wrappers, and I know what all of them are. I like knowing what I'm eating.

As it turns out, the bread machine has been a great little tool. I have learned to make a great homemade version of the kids' beloved Hawaiian rolls, using this recipe:

http://www.food.com/recipe/hawaiian-sweet-rolls-bread-machine-436332

I also love that I could just put in all of the ingredients, turn on the machine, go to bed and wake up to freshly baked bread. Perfect. Now, for the first few weeks, I just used the 100% Whole Wheat Recipe I found in the book that came with my bread machine. Honestly, I was a little afraid to experiment, but, after successfully making a number of loaves of well-received bread I decided that the worst thing that could possibly happen would be a bad loaf of bread and a trip back to the ol' drawing board. So, using the recipe in the book as a framework, I came up with the following recipe, which I think is perfect. This will be my new wheat bread recipe. so far, everyone who has tried it likes it. I find it lighter and more flavourful than the original recipe.

Oh! BTW, I have no idea how other bread machines work, so I will give this recipe using the instructions for mine, and hopefully, you will know how to adapt them to your own machine.

Everyday Special Honey Wheat Bread:

(makes a 2 pound loaf)

1 2/3 cups water
2 TBS margarine or butter
1/3 cup honey
2 tsp salt
4 cups whole wheat flour
2/3 cup almond meal
3 tsp active dry yeast

Place first 6 ingredients in your bread machine pan, in the order listed. Make a small well in the center of the flour/almond meal. Place the yeast in that little well. Snap the pan into your bread machine and close the lid.

Choose the "Whole Wheat" setting on your machine. Choose your crust colour (I find "light" works best for most of our breads). Press "Start."

Now, go do something else fun while your bread bakes itself.

Cool, huh?