Soft Homemade Wheat Bread (from a bread machine)

About a year (or two?) ago, I borrowed my mom's old bread machine in hopes of regularly making our own bread (the manual is from 1992, so this is a dinosaur). I tried one loaf and it came out short, dense and became rock hard the next day.

I put the machine in my closet and it stayed there a long time...

I finally got it back out a few weeks ago to make an honest effort this time. I wanted to find a whole wheat recipe that will make soft bread (I mean, why would you want it any other way?). I found one that I have made about 5 times. The bread is definitely soft and we all love it.

The author of the blog post/recipe wrote a lot about it, so I'll let you read what she says and get the recipe from her:

Super Soft Whole Grain Sandwich Bread

She suggests mixing up all the ingredients - except the yeast and salt - the night before and letting it sit in the bread machine. Then add the yeast and salt in the morning and start it up. Soaking the flour like this makes the bread softer and more digestible.

A couple notes about the recipe:

1. It calls for whole wheat pastry or spelt flour. I didn't know where to buy either of those, so I'm just using plain old whole wheat flour. It seems fine to me.

2. The first time I made this, I already had a packet of dry active yeast. This batch turned out a little short. I then bought a small jar of "bread machine" yeast and the dough rose up so tall that it touched the top glass of the machine. I now only put in 2 tsp. of yeast instead of the 2 1/2 tsp that it calls for.

That's about it. If you have a bread machine, give it a try!