Wheat Bread, Five Minute Style

Our family really loved the bread from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. It was pretty cool to have fancy restaurant bread on our weeknight table. Oh, and the focaccia was so delicious. But it also seemed a little odd to add extra steps to the dinner preparation process for something that was all white flour. Now, the extra steps are very easy, but no matter how easy, it's still extra. And we currently eat a whole grain bread that we're very happy with. We thought maybe the fresh bread would be a better overall thing for us if it were wheat bread instead of white.

So, I tried the basic wheat bread recipe from Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day. It required an additional ingredient, vital wheat gluten (they talk about what this is in the recipe link), but I was able to find it at my regular grocery store so it wasn't a problem. It was just as easy to make as the white bread, so I felt like things were going quite well. Unfortunately, my family was underwhelmed with the result.

It's nice bread. There isn't anything wrong with it. It's a little dense, a little wheaty, but still good. We just didn't love it. I've only made two loaves over the first week I've had the dough (which is fine, it makes four loaves and keeps two weeks) and we didn't finish either of them. I made french toast out of the leftovers on Saturday morning, which was also fine but not fabulous. I could be wrong but I think it would be a lot better with a little sugar to balance out the wheaty-ness. And I'm not inclined to strike out on my own and experiment on what is essentially a quadruple recipe. I need to check out the other recipes in the book (I'm next on the library waiting list) and talk to some others that have tried it and see if there is something I didn't do quite right or maybe another recipe using this method that we might really love as much as we love the white breads.