Whole Wheat Olive Oil Bread

Happy New Year! I hope you enjoyed the holidays and are ready to face 2011 with a lot of energy and enthusiasm. If you are like me, your resolutions for this year include eating healthier and exercising more. Eating healthy can be very easy when the food you eat is not only nutritious, but also tasty and flavorful. Just by including more whole grains in your diet and using extra virgin olive oil, instead of butter or margarine, you can achieve that. In this issue, I wanted to share with you one of my favorite healthy bread recipes: whole wheat olive oil bread. This bread is slightly more than 60% whole wheat and with the addition of olive oil it is so delightful that I can eat it every day with nothing else.

Ingredients  (1 oz = 0.2835 grams)

0.6 oz dried yeast

14 oz water

16 oz whole wheat flour (King Arthur)

10 oz bread flour (King Arthur)

2 oz honey

½ oz salt

2 oz olive oil

Procedure

Warm 3 oz of water to 110 F. Dissolve the dry yeast into the water and let it rest for 5 minutes.

Add the rest of the water and the two flours and mix until blend the flour is well-moistened and the dough comes together.

Add the honey, salt and oil and continue kneading until the dough becomes elastic (approximately 12 minutes).

Put the dough into a lightly oiled bowl

 cover with plastic wrap and allow it to rest until it doubles it size (approximately 2 hours) or overnight in the refrigerator

 Turn the dough out, this time on a lightly oiled surface. Divide in half. Lightly knead and form the dough into loaves (see below) and place on a floured baking sheet or into two oiled loaf pans.

Cover again and allow them to rise for an hour more. At this point you can preheat the oven to 400F.

When the loaves have risen, make incisions on top with a serrated knife and brush the top with cold water.

Bake for about 45 minutes or until the crust is nice brown and the internal temperature of the bread is 180F (I insert a kitchen thermometer in the middle of the bread).

I put a bowls with water in the rack below the bread to create steam (good for the crust).

Enjoy!