Last time I checked, nuts were not a grain. But for some reason, all the multi-grain breads out there have nuts of one sort or another thrown into the mix. So the options are a.) getting used to boring white bread or b.) embracing that grain aisle with both arms and making the best nut-free multi-grain bread out there.
This recipe is not for the faint of heart. The ingredients are many. The check-out guy will make a comment on your cart full of fiber. Your husband will gasp at the bags in the freezer taking up prime ice cream space. But one slice of this whole-grain wonderful goodness and you’ll know it was worth the effort. Birkenstocks and baby slings are optional.
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Mighty Multigrain Bread
- Total Time: 3 hours 40 minutes
- Yield: 2 loaves 1x
Description
This multigrain bread is dairy-free, egg-free, and nut-free. The whole grains are softened in a soaker method, so the grains melt into the bread.
Ingredients
Whole Grain Soak:
- 1/4 cup steel-cut oats (like McCanns)
- 1/4 cup cracked wheat
- 1/4 cup millet
- 1 cup boiling water
Dough:
- 1 1/2 cups water
- 1/4 cup old fashioned rolled oats
- 1/4 cup wheat bran or wheat germ
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
- 1 T. instant yeast
- 2 T. flax seeds
- 2 T. oil
- 2 t. salt
- 4–5 cups bread flour
Instructions
- Place the steel cut oats, wheat and millet in a bowl (I use a 2 cup Pyrex) and pour boiling water on top. Allow to sit and soak until water is room temp.
- Meanwhile, measure the rest of the ingredients into a bowl of a stand mixer. Start out with 4 cups of bread flour, you will add more later.
- Add the soaked and cooled grains to the big bowl and start kneading. Add more flour if the dough seems particularly sticky. I usually need up add up to 1 cup of flour at least, depending on how much water is absorbed by the grains. The dough will be soft but not a sticky mess.
- Knead for about 5 minutes.
- Cover the bowl with plastic wrap allow to raise at room temp for 1 1/2 hours.
- Divide the dough in 2, shape into loaves and place into greased bread loaf pans.
- Cover with a towel and allow to raise for another hour, until the edges of the dough have reached the edge of the pan.
- Heat oven to 365 and bake for 30-40 minutes, until a thermometer inserted into the loaf reaches 190-200 degrees. Cover loosely with foil if the tops seem to be browning too quickly.
- Remove bread from loaves and allow to cool on a rack before slicing! Enjoy!
- Prep Time: 3 hours
- Cook Time: 40 minutes
- Category: Bread
- Method: Baked
- Cuisine: American
I'm insanely excited to try this recipe! We make "real lovin' bread" once a week. We have a sunflower allergy here 🙁 do you recommended subbing something else or can i just leave them out? Maybe i could just up the oats a bit….
Just leave 'em out. Our littlest has a sunflower allergy too (hives and wheezing after a bite of an Enjoy Life cookie? we can't get a break around here!) but his wheat allergy already disqualifies him from this one.
oh, i'm sorry to hear about your sunflower allergic one. you're echoing my thoughts, "we can't get a break around here!"
Is millet flour the same thing as millet? I could only find millet flour. Will that work? Also, our store has tons of specialty flours and such, but I could not find cracked wheat. Does it go by another name? Can I sub something for it? Thanks!
You might want to look in the grains section rather than the flour section. Millet is the whole grain, if you look super close at the picture you can see the little yellow balls. When you soak it, it gives a neat little crunch to the bread. Millet flour is the ground up millet, I use that in wheat-free baked goods for my wheat-allergic one. Cracked wheat is also a whole-type grain, basically crushed wheat berries, sometimes served as a hot cereal. Bulghur is similar, but is a quick-cooking version because it is pre-cooked and dried (Kind of like the difference between steel cut oats and rolled oats). I think both mine were made by Bob's Red Mill. If your store is fancy enough to have millet flour, they might have these others hiding near the rice or the hot cereal.
Thanks for your reply. Do you think that Bob's Red Mill soft white wheat berries would be the item I am looking for?
I found cracked wheat (and the millet). Thank You!
Geez louise, how can I NOT try this?? 🙂 But I have to wait and buy it all through Azure Standard so it doesn't cost me an arm and a leg. But they don't sell cracked wheat! Odd! So I'll be trying it out later this month!
Thanks for the tip on the safe sunflowers seeds, I've had my eye out for those for a while. Sorry about your littlest. Can't eat Enjoy Life? That's just not right!
Thank you for the great recipe. I could not find the cracked wheat so I just left it out. I will have to look for it at a bigger health food store.
You’re welcome! If you find the cracked wheat, it lasts nearly forever in the freezer!