90 Minute Whole Wheat Bread

Note by my friend Kathy: "I followed the recipe exactly, and it turned out great!"

90 Minute Whole Wheat Bread

Mix and let stand five minutes:

1 cup warm water

2 tablespoons dry yeast

2 tablespoons brown sugar

Mix:

1/3 cup oil

1/3 cup honey

1 tablespoon salt

3 cups fairly warm water

1 cup instant powdered milk (or 1/2 cup noninstant powdered milk, mixed with flour to avoid lumping)

Add the yeast mixture to the second mixture. Add 8 cups whole wheat flour. Stir well. Grease three 46-oz. tall empty juice cans with one end removed. Divide the batter evenly into cans. Place cans standing up in oven. Turn oven on to 350°F for one minute. Turn oven off. Let bread raise in oven for 15 minutes. Turn the oven on to 350°F and bake for 50 minutes. Remove bread from oven and let cool in pans 10 minutes, before turning out onto rack to cool. Where possible, use an electric knife to slice the bread. This recipe can be doubled.

Notes: Use margarine or solid shortening to grease the cans. I tried using cooking spray once, and used cooking oil another time, but neither one seemed to work as well as margarine or Crisco.

Prepare the cans before activating the yeast. If you take too long getting to the point of baking the bread, it may be too airy - you may end up with a hole in the middle of the bread, making the bread difficult to slice. Sometimes the bread raises up and over the top of the can during the baking process. It lookes a bit like a mushroom. Make sure to set your oven racks to allow for this possiblity. More than once the heating element has "branded" my bread. Typically, the bread comes to the top of the can, and is a bit rounded at that tend. This shape has given raise to the nickname at our house of "bullet bread."

I have gotten distracted during the fifteen-minute time the bread raises in the oven, and let it go too long. I simply punch the dough back down into the cans and bake it immediately. I hope you'll enjoy this bread as much as our family has!

Recipe submitted to mormonchic.com by Mary Sue, Rockwood 2nd Ward, St. Louis Missouri Stake. Recipe taken from an old Ensign, and was origionally submitted to them by Marilyn Rands of Bellevue, WA.