Would you like some bread to go with that jam?

Sunday was the strangest weather. We had sun, wind, rain and hail. I think the end of May was more like the beginning of March. To top it all off, we had a high of a whole 48 degrees!

To warm the house up I decided to bake a loaf of bread. I certainly wasn't going to turn my furnace on! I wanted to use the bread machine to do all the kneading work so I went to allrecipes to find a bread machine recipe. I found one for Maple Whole Wheat Bread that sounded pretty good.

I did end up changing my flours up some. My experience with Whole Wheat has never been that great and the rise never seemed to be too good - so I decided to cut the whole wheat flour by 1/4 cup and add a 1/4 cup of vital wheat gluten flour. I also went with the white whole wheat because Grumpy may complain if I didn't....and we can't have him complaining! If I can say so myself, that bread turned out pretty awesome! Of course, you can take the word of my Daddy and my son (who I baked a loaf for yesterday and am delivering to him this afternoon!) as they both had some and said it was great. I think the recipe is great the way I made it and I will keep using this recipe from now on when I want wheat bread!

Maple Honey Whole Wheat Bread
adapted from allrecipes.com

2 -1/4 cups King Arthur white whole wheat flour
1/2 cup bread flour
1/4 cup vital wheat gluten flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
1-1/4 cups warm water
4 tablespoons maple syrup
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast

Place maple syrup, water and olive oil in bread machine pan. Top with flours and salt. Make a well in the center of the flour and place the yeast in well. Set bread machine for dough setting.

My dough setting takes 1-1/2 hours. Once the beeper goes off remove the bread and shape into a loaf. Let rise until bread top just peaks over the top of the bread pan. Bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes until bread sounds hollow when tapped and is nicely browned.