Ingredients:

1⅔ cups whole milk
2 Tbs shortening
1 package (¼ oz) active dry yeast
¼ tsp sugar
1 egg
1 Tbs salt
5⅓ cups unbleached white bread flour
½ cup 8-grain cereal (uncooked)
2 Tbs butter, melted

Directions:

1. Heat milk with shortening for a minute in the microwave. Check to see if the shortening has melted. If not, continue to irradiate. Once it has melted, if this process has raised your milk to room temperature or slightly warmer, that’s nice. If your mixture is hot, let it cool to tepid.
2. Proof yeast with ¼-cup warm water and ¼-tsp sugar, let rise until bubbly.
3. Crack the egg into a the bowl of a stand mixer and beat it with a fork. Add salt, cereal, and 1 cup flour. Pour in milk mixture and yeast mixture.
4. Fit the mixer with the dough hook, and mix on lowest speed until everything is roughly incorporated.
5. Add a second cup of flour, and mix until pretty decently incorporated. Continue adding flour, a cup at a time, and mixing until incorporated, until the dough forms a coherent mass around the hook. At this point, reduce your flour additions to ⅓-cup and continue to add and knead, add and knead, until the dough no longer sticks to the sides of the bowl, but instead cleans the bowl. As soon as this happens, stop adding flour and knead for 2 minutes. Stop the mixer and check the dough. If it’s sticky, add a small handful of flour and continue kneading. Once it’s no longer sticky, take it out and play with it. Toss it between your hands, squeeze it, roll it around on the counter top, stick your fingers in it, knead it lightly. It should feel good – so you good you want to just keep playing with it. It should feel soft and satiny, but not sticky. It should feel substantial and should hold its shape, yet at the same time it should yield to your manipulations in an elastic, satisfying way. To reach this point, you may use dramatically less flour than called for; you may use more.
6. Remove dough from bowl and rest it on a floured surface. Whilst it relaxes, give that mixing bowl a brisk and manly clean and dry, then butter it thoroughly. Return the dough to the bowl, then remove it from the bowl, flip it over, and put it back in the bowl. (This will get your dough ball covered in butter.) Cover the bowl loosely with buttered plastic wrap, and put it in the refrigerator overnight (9½ hours or more).

8-Grain White Bread

PBJ

7. Allow 2 hours for the chilled dough to come toward room temperature the following morning. After it’s been out of the fridge for a while, the dough may become wet and/or sticky from condensation; that’s OK. Briefly kneading it on a lightly-floured surface will fix that instantly. Divide it in half, and shape it one way or another into two loaves. Place each one in a greased bread pan. Let rise until they clear the edges of the pans or until you just can’t take it any more.
8. At least ½-hour before the loaves are ready, move your bread stone to the center rack. Preheat the oven to 375˚F.
9. Bake for ½ hour. Immediately remove bread from pans and allow to cool on wire racks. This recipe produces a mildly crusty crust. To soften it, brush the loaves with melted butter immediately upon removing them from the pans. OR, once the loaves have come utterly and completely to room temperature, keep them in plastic bags.

♠

See Also:

Credits: hover over caption to see source; click caption to jump to source; click image to enlarge

Next Up:

I stumbled upon this while prepping today’s post. As soon as I’ve eaten the loaves of white bread I just baked, I’m’n’a give this a try! If you’re sure that there’s got to be some kind of bread that’s better for you than white bread, you know damn well it’s got to be chocolate bread!

Chocolate Bread