The Easiest 100% Whole Wheat Bread Ever

For Earth Day, I decided to do a little bit of whole grain baking. I don't know if it's really in the "spirit" of Earth Day, but it made sense in my head at the time. :)

A couple of weeks ago, I accidentally got a copy of the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking cookbook (it was the featured selection for the mail-order cookbook club I'm in, and I missed the reply date to stop them from sending it). Anyway, as I looked through the book, I knew it would be staying here. I'd been wanting to use more whole grains in my baking, and this book fell in my lap at exactly the right time.

After paging through it and filling my head with too many ideas, I had a flour spree at the natural market. Rye flour, white whole wheat flour, and spelt flour... in addition to the all-purpose flour, bread flour, and regular whole wheat flour I already had on hand. I think I may have a problem.

This afternoon, I busted out a quick 100% whole wheat bread--specifically, "The Easiest 100% Whole Wheat Bread Ever". It's a yeast bread, but comes together much more like a quickbread. Everything is mixed together in a bowl, with no kneading. After mixing for a couple of minutes, you put the dough in a loaf pan to proof for an hour (although the recipe does warn that the dough will not actually "rise" at all), and then bake it for about 45 minutes. They're not kidding about the "easy" part.

Results?

Really nice, sweet flavor, thanks to orange juice and molasses in the dough. Because there wasn't much kneading, the finished bread turned out dense and moist. It fell apart pretty easily--again, no kneading will do that. And check out the color:


The recipe note suggested a light slathering of cream cheese... who am I to argue? :)