Whole Grain Bread

OK, one of the yummiest things we’ve done this past year is bake our own bread.  The whole house smells wonderful for hours afterward and the taste of our own bread just can not be compared to what we can buy in stores or even the Swiss bakeries today. OK, sure… there are a lot of wonderful breads in the bakery these days but our recipe is a bit different and we have yet to come across something that tastes remotely similar.  Our recipe is simple and the work is usually done within 10 minutes (including clean-up). The bread machine, on the other hand.. takes another 3 hours and 40 minutes to work its magic and deliver those yummy smells.  Ready to give it a try?  here we go:

INGREDIENTS:
350ml sparkling water
50ml apple juice
30ml Holunder Bluten (elder flower) syrup
1 TBS honey (I use a squeezable honey bear and pour for about 10 seconds)
1 TBS Leinöl (Linseed oil also known as “flax seed oil)
1 TBS of either Walnut oil or Sesame oil
1 handful of pecans (don’t you love the precision)
.5 tsp cumin (or none if you don’t like cumin)
3 TBS each of the following grains:
Roggen, Grunkern, Dinkel, Hirse, Leinsamen, Hafer, Sonnenblumenkerne
Rye, Dried half ripe Spelt (aka Green Grain), Spelt, Millet, Flax Seed, Oats, Sunflower seeds

Half of the 1kg ALDI Vollkorn Brotback Mischung or the Roggen Brotback Mischung

Grinding:
Put all the grains into the VitaMix dry container and pulse at top speed 10 times for less than 1 second each time
(this works out to 1.5 cup total before and 2c after grinding)

The Bread Machine:
Pour all liquids into the bread machine container (yes, the oils and the honey too)

Then pour the ground up grains on top of the liquids and finally the ALDI flour mix (it contains yeast and other goodies too)

The Bread machine should be set to: 3 vollkorn (whole wheat) dunkel (dark color) & ii teigmenge (large quantity).
This will generally take 3hrs 40mins!
The 3rd hour of the process is when the kitchen starts to smell delicious.

Be sure to remove the bread from the bread machine ASAP and place it on a rack to cool with a clean kitchen cloth covering it. 6 to 12 hours later some of the most fantastic bread you have ever tried will be ready to eat.

Here are some pics of the grains and flour mixture from ALDI.