No Knead Wholemeal Bread

In this busy, time-poor world of ours we think that it takes too long and is difficult to make bread from scratch. How wrong we can be!? This bread is super quick to make. In a little over an hour you can have 2 loaves of warm, fresh bread ready to enjoy.

I make this bread once a week. Pop it in the oven while I am preparing dinner. By bedtime it is cooled and ready to put away, fresh bread for Hubby’s lunches.

It is a hearty wholemeal bread that you can add your favourite flavour additions too – oats, seeds, nuts.

** Please note: this bread is NOT gluten free! **

This bread uses a sourdough starter to add extra flavour to the bread but you can leave it out and just add extra water. Details on making a starter are at the bottom of the page.

Ingredients

2 ½ cup high grade white flour

3 cup wholemeal flour

1 Tablespoon instant dry yeast

2 cup rolled oats

2 cup mixed seeds (any combination of sunflower, pumpkin, chia, sesame or linseed)

1 teaspoon salt

3 cup warm water

2 teaspoons cider vinegar

1 cup sourdough starter **

1 Tablespoon honey

Method

Set the oven to preheat to 80C. Grease and flour 2 loaf tins.

Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl, stir. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients. Dissolve the honey in the warm water. Add all the wet ingredients to the dry, mix thoroughly to make sure all is well combined. The mix is quite wet.

Divide the dough evenly and spoon into the two the prepared loaf tins. Smooth down the top of the loaves with lightly oiled hands. Place the loaf tins into the 80C oven for 20 minutes. Turn the temperature up to 210C and cook for a further 35 minutes. Remove from the oven and turn the bread out of the tins straight away to cool on a rack.

Variations

* I am sure that you could mix up the flours and use different types, but I wouldn’t recommend using less than 2 c of high grade flour or the bread will be very dense.

* For bread rolls divide the dough between greased and floured muffin tins; only fill the muffin tins to ¾ filled. Will make about 24 muffin-rolls.

* If not using Sourdough Starter add ¾ cup of warm water instead.

** Sourdough Starter Tips

To make a sourdough starter, in a glass or pottery jar, mix together ¼ cup each of flour and water and simply leave for a few days to start fermenting. Cover the jar with a cloth to keep out insects but toallow the gas produced by the starter to escape.

Once you see bubbles beginning to form, indicating the fermentation has begun, you will need to start feeding your starter. Feed daily with a minimum of 2 Tbsp. white flour + 2 Tbsp. warm water. Amounts to feed will depend on how often you are going to be using the starter, just stick to the 1:1flour water ratio.

Mix with a wooden or plastic utensil. Scrape down the sides of the jar before covering.

Keep the starter on the kitchen bench, out of direct sunlight.

Make sure you have at least 1 ¼ cup of starter before you make up the bread as you need to have about ¼ cup of starter to start building it up again for next time.

If you are going away you can keep the starter in the fridge, unfed, for up to 2 weeks; just be sure to give it a good feed before you pop it in the fridge. Allow it to warm up again before feeding, and feed it for a couple of days before using.

To see how quick and easy it is to make this delicious bread please head on over to You Tube to watch a demo video.