Wheat Berry Bread

Wheat Berry Bread
(Makes 5-6 loaves)

Boil 1 cup of wheat berries in 4 cups of water and half a teaspoon of salt. Cover and simmer for three hours. Add enough water to the weed to measure 6 1/2 cups total. It’s ideal to soak the wheat berries overnight before you simmer them. Sometimes that just doesn’t happen and that’s OK.

1/3 cup oil
2/3 cup honey
6 cups wheat flour
1 1/2 Tbsp active dry yeast
7-8 cups white flour

Bring the boiled wheat mixture to a just warm temperature and combine in your bread bowl or mixer with oil, honey, yeast, and 4 cups of the wheat flour. Once that as well combined add the rest of the wheat flour and then start adding the white flour one cup at a time on low speed. As the mixer becomes sluggish turn up the speed and add flour until the door pulls away from the sides of the wall. Cover loosely with greased plastic wrap and rise in a warm space until doubled in size about 1 1/2 hours. Then turn out onto a lightly greased countertop and divided into five or six balls of dough. Kneed out the air pockets and shape into loaves. Place in a bread pan cover loosely with plastic wrap that’s greased, and repeat for the remaining loaves. Let the loaves rise until they have doubled in size for about another hour and a half and then bake at 350° for 45 minutes total. Bake the first 25 minutes with the loaves uncovered and then slide into long sheets of foil over the top of the loaves to bake for the remaining time so that the loaves don’t over brown. When the loaves are done you can knock on the top of them and they will sound hollow. Use immediately or freeze the remaining loaves in freezer bags.