This Cracked Wheat Bread recipe is crunchy, delicious, and healthy. It goes well alongside any meal of the day and due to all of the different grains, provides a good amount of fiber and heart healthy fats. There are no harmful additives or preservatives that are often found in store bought brands.


Ingredients
1 ½ Cups Cracked Wheat
4 Cups Water

1 ½ Ounces Dry Yeast
¼ Cup Honey
1 Tbsp Salt
¼ Cup Vegetable Oil
1 ½ Cups Warm Water

½ Cup Flax Seed
½ Cup Sunflower Seeds
1 ½ Cup Oatmeal
5 Cups Flour (approximately), white or wheat


To prepare the cracked wheat:
Bring the four cups of water to a boil; add the cracked wheat and lower the heat, cooking for ten minutes or until it reaches a thick consistency. Cool enough that the heat from it won’t kill the yeast (roughly 15 minutes). You can speed the cooling process by setting the saucepan in a sink full of cold water.

Making the Dough
In a very large bowl, pour the warm water in with the dry yeast and mix; let sit 5 minutes. Add in all other ingredients, except for the flour, which should be the last addition.

Once everything is mixed well, start adding in the flour ½ cup at a time until the dough is pliable and elastic. Adding flour to this mix is different from most other bread recipes in that usually you can gauge how much flour is enough when the bread dough becomes workable and stops sticking to your fingers. This dough is a bit messy, however, and you would have to add too much flour in order for it to stop sticking to your hands. You may find that you need more or less than 5 cups of flour for the bread dough to become elastic. Working a small amount of vegetable oil onto your hands can help prevent the dough from sticking too badly.

Cover the crusty bread dough with a towel and let sit until it doubles in size; usually this takes about an hour. Once it has doubled, punch the dough down and form into loaves that fill lightly greased bread pans roughly halfway. Let rise again until doubled (another hour to hour and a half) before placing in a preheated oven at 375° for approximately 35 minutes. The loaves should be a golden brown on top and sound hollow when thumped. Let the cracked wheat bread cool on a cooking rack in order to get maximum crunchiness from the loaf!

Makes 4 large loaves.


This recipe can vary widely in ingredients; once you get familiar with bread making, try adding different whole grains for different textures and tastes. Raisins, oat bran, quinoa, steel cut oats, and brown rice are just a few of the options that taste great in variations of this recipe.

Cracked Wheat Bread Nutrition
Serving size: 1/8 of one loaf
Calories: 144
Total Fat: 3.7 g
Saturated Fat: .6 g
Cholesterol: 0 mg
Sodium: 220 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 23 g
Dietary Fiber: 2.4 g
Sugars: 2.4 g
Protein: 4.2 g