Behold, the Triumphant Loaf!

That's the bread I made today.  Seriously.  A new light has shone like a beacon of promise into my world of homemade carbohydrate delight.  And just what was it that evoked such a rapturous response?  Get ready for it...

Whole Grain Bread.

Yup.  The name does not do justice to the glory of this loaf.  But I've been searching for about ten years for a whole wheat bread recipe that met my expectations for excellent, healthy homemade bread and folks, this is it.  The secret?  "Soaking" the dough overnight.  Basically you combine the ingrediets (minus the yeast) and let it sit overnight.  The dough develops an ever-so-slight sourdough-like tanginess, but it's the texture of this bread that really blew me away.  No more dry, crumbling whole wheat!  This bread is chewy, soft, and "stretchy" much like white bread.  Soaking whole grains also has nutrition benefits as well.  According to Sally Fallon in the cookbook Nourishing Traditions, "Soaking increases vitamin content and makes all the nutrients in grain more available.  This method has the further advantage of so softening whole meal flour that the final product is often indistinguishable from one made with white flour...not characterized by the heaviness that can make whole grain products so unpalatable."  I couldn't have said it better.  (That cookbook, by the way, is mind-blowing.  At least if you get excited about that kind of thing...)

I can't wait to try it sliced and toasted for grilled cheese tomorrow for lunch!  I'm not going to give you the complete recipe here because, well, it's not my recipe!  Go check out the recipe, Soaked Whole Grain Bread at one of my very favorite blogs, Passionate Homemaking.  I would recommend doing 1/2 a batch unless you have a professional sized stand mixer (or very strong mixing muscles).

I am realizing as I write this that I must be some kind of bread nerd.  I mean seriously, who really gets this worked up over a slice of bread?  Well, I do.  And maybe once you try this recipe, you will too!  We're supposed to get a bunch of snow today, so go ahead and make yourself some homemade bread while you're snowed in!

See where I poked it?  Soft and spongy, not dry and crumbly!