Whole Wheat Bread / Rolls

Last weekend I found this recipe for whole wheat bread on allrecipes.com. What drew me to this particular recipe was that it substituted honey for sugar, something I had been wanting to try for a while. The original recipe yielded 3 loaves of bread. Well, that's just too much for John and I all at one time so I decided to cut the recipe in half. The great thing about using allrecipes.com is that the website will do the calculations for you! You can reduce the number of servings in the recipe and the website will recalculate the amounts. It's genious, I tell ya.

Since I cut the recipe in half, I essentially had enough dough for 1 and a half loaves. So I filled my bread pan with enough dough to make one loaf. Then I broke apart the rest of the dough into small balls to make rolls. I read about doing this in one of the reviews for this recipe and I thought it was a great idea. I baked the loaf of bread as the recipe said. But for the rolls, I reduced the bake time to 15 minutes.

THIS RECIPE MADE THE BEST ROLLS!!

I would have never thought I'd find a great roll recipe using bread dough. Absolutely incredible! I'm making a batch of these rolls for Thanksgiving and I'm so excited!!!

Whole Wheat Bread

(yields 1 1/2 loaves)

1 1/2 cups warm water (110 degrees)

1 package (or 2 1/2 tsp) active dry yeast

2 tablespoons + 2 tsp honey

2 1/2 cups bread flour

1 tablespoon + 1 1/2 tsp butter, melted

2 tablespoons + 2 tsp honey

1 1/2 tsp salt

1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour

All-Purpose Flour, enough to flour surface

1 tablespoon butter, melted

In a large bowl, mix warm water, yeast and 2 Tb + 2 tsp honey. (Let stand for 5 minutes.)

Add bread flour, stir to combine. (I use my kitchen aid mixer for this part.) Let stand for 30 minutes until big and bubbly.

Mix in 1 Tbs + 1 1/2 tsp melted butter, 2 Tbs + 2 tsp honey and salt. Stir in whole wheat flour. (Again, I use my kitchen aid mixer for this. Mix until dough is not sticking to sides of bowl. This took about 7-10 minutes on speed 2 using the dough hook.)

Turn dough out onto surface lightly sprinkled with all-purpose flour. Roll into a ball and place in a well greased bowl. Turn the dough once to coat the surface. (I use oilve oil or Pam to grease my bowl. Both work fine.)

Cover with a dish towel. Let rise in a warm place until doubled in size. (I place my bowl on top of the stove and turn the oven on to 200 degrees. This heats the stove top just enough to help the dough rise. It takes about 1 and a half hours for my dough to rise.)

Punch down dough and divide. Place about 3/4 of the dough in a greased 9x5 inch loaf pan. Break apart the remaining dough into 9-12 small sized balls and place in a greased 8 inch round cake pan. Allow the dough to rise again until the the dough has topped the pans by one inch. (It is ok if the rolls are touching after they have risen. This won't affect the baking process and they will be very easy to pull apart once they are done.)

Bake the bread loaf at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes. Do not overbake. (The bread should be firm to the touch.)

Bake the rolls at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. (The rolls should not be as firm as the bread.)

Lightly brush the tops with the remaining melted butter. This helps prevent crust from getting hard. Cool completely on a wire rack. (Or eat the rolls right out of the pan while still warm. They are delicious!!!)

**Note: The picture above was taken from the allrecipes.com website. I didn't snap a picture of my bread or rolls when I made them because my camera was out of battery. But I'll take a picture of the rolls when I make them for Thanksgiving. Also, I didn't sprinkle oats on top of my bread as shown in the picture above. I only brushed melted butter on top after baking.