Homemade Bread 1/2 & 1/2

Many would call this recipe a whole wheat bread because half the flour is indeed whole wheat. But half of it is all-purpose flour, so I feel weird calling it a whole wheat loaf of bread...when I hear whole wheat, I expect that it's only made with whole wheat flour. That's certainly not true in the grocery stores, but homemade bread? It should be. I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We had a great time with a lot of great food, friends, games and a family Turkey Trot to kick off the morning. As the days passed, the boys and I were longing for Andy's turkey sandwiches. I don't know what my husband does to these sandwiches to make them so good, but he is able to turn four simple ingredients into the tastiest sandwich known to man. We were out of bread, and I wasn't about to miss out on these sandwiches, so I decided to make a couple of loaves, some homemade mayonnaise and let Andy do the rest with salt and pepper and leftover turkey.

This recipe for the bread comes from the Kitchn, which is a wonderful blog for both recipes as well as basic and advanced techniques for cooking. She gives step-by-step directions with pictures, so I'll point you to her blog for the recipe, but this was probably the easiest yeast bread I've ever made, except for the English Muffin Toast. It does take time, yes, but it is so worth it. This bread is chewy, but soft and light (thanks to the AP flour), yet still packs a nutritional punch. (I'm still working on finding a yeast dough that is 100% whole wheat that can get this light but chewy texture...I'll find it!) I only ran into one problem in the preparation. On my last rise, when the dough is in the loaf pans, they didn't rise like they should. I simply pulled them down off the top of my fridge (which is where I let all my yeast doughs proof and rise - super warm up there) and put them on top of the preheating oven for an extra 20 minutes. Boom! They rose beautifully.

If you're a fan of homemade bread (and who isn't??), try this recipe out...super yummy!!!

The Kitchn Whole Wheat Bread (what I call 1/2 & 1/2 bread).

*Don't mind my lumpy bread - I'm still working on perfecting the pinching technique! It didn't affect the taste one little bit!