Dairy-Free Quarter-Whole Wheat Bread

DAIRY-FREE QUARTER-WHOLE-WHEAT BREAD

Combine

4 cups warm water

a can of coconut milk + enough water to measure 2 cups (can also use other types of milk or “milk” — you do want some richness to this to produce a nice tender crumb)

1 teaspoon active dry yeast (not a typo — hence the slow rise)

3 cups whole wheat flour

2 tablespoons honey (or malt extract, or maple syrup)

~9 cups all purpose flour

2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons olive oil

in the bowl of a stand mixer or a REALLY large bowl. If doing this by hand it will take A LOT of muscle. The final amount of all purpose flour depends on you (and room humidity) — I like my bread dough on the tacky side. Knead for 10-15 minutes. Let rise in the bowl until doubled.

Shape into 3-4 loaves (I use wet or sprayed hands for this), and let rise in greased pans, covered with kitchen towels — either free-form or use loaf pans or whatever pans you have around. I used 3 loaf pans of varying sizes, plus an 8-inch cake pan.

Let rise until about an inch above the rim of the pan, and bake in a 375F-degree oven until golden brown and middle registers ~190-200F on a thermometer, about 50-55 minutes. Turn out onto racks to cool. Cool completely before slicing, although we dug into one of the loaves immediately, for dinner with a bean/vegetable soup and monkfish in a garlic-tomato sauce.

Just to give you an idea of how long the process takes, I started the dough at 11:30 am, let rise until 3:30 pm, shaped and put into pans and let rise again until 5:30 pm, when I baked them. We had dinner at around 7 pm. And enjoyed the rest of the loaves over the next few days.

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