Adam and I bought a bread machine last fall with the hopes of saving some money — but you have to make quite a few loaves to pay off the cost of the machine itself, so we have made the commitment to buying little-to-no bread for several months now.  I actually don’t remember now the last time we bought bread.

My favorite bread in the whole world is from St. Martin’s Table, a wonderful vegetarian restaurant in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood in Minneapolis.  If I had the means, I would hire them to cook for me full time.  We have their cookbook, and Adam adapted the bread recipe to work in the bread machine.  We have tried MANY whole wheat bread machine bread recipes and this is hands-down, no contest, the best.

SO without further ado:

St. Martin’s Table Honey Whole Wheat Bread — for a 2 lb.-capacity bread machine
1 and 3/4 c. warm water
1/3 c. oil (we use olive)
1/3 c. honey
1 T. salt
1 c. white bread flour (all purpose will do in a pinch)
3 c. whole wheat bread floor (or 2 c. whole wheat and 1 c. multigrain)
1 T. dry yeast

Add ingredients, in order, to bread machine pan.  Set machine to whole wheat setting, light crust, 1.5 lb loaf.  You actually end up with a 2 lb loaf, but Adam has found that the crust turns out nicer at the 1.5 lb setting.

Keep an eye on the dough during the first knead cycle.  It should form a nice ball and look slightly sticky — whole wheat flour takes a longer time to absorb liquid than white flour does.  If it seems really sticky and is not forming a nice ball, add another 1-2 T of flour.

Here is the dough at the end of the first knead cycle — a nice sticky ball of dough.

Here is the dough after the last rise cycle — this one really took off!

UPDATE 19 Feb. 2010: Well, we got rid of the bread machine after we learned about the no-knead bread method and read Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes a Day — I will post another version of this recipe adapted to that method soon.