The perfect recipe

Most of my blog posts are focused around our family & what we are doing etc. Well I have decided to take a different angle today & focus on another important part of my life. Making food... When you have a family of 9 you will spend lots of time in the kitchen.:) For me thats not a drudgery because I actually enjoy cooking & baking.
 I have baked bread for our family ever since we got married. My interest in bread baking started way back when I was a little girl & my friend's mom always had homemade bread. It was so absolutely delicious especially fresh from the oven! My mom never cared to try & bake bread she made awesome pies, & all kinds of other good food but not bread.
While I was in VS in Haiti all our bread was homemade, so there I got lots of tips on how to make it. :) I learned things like good flour is a MUST or the bread will flop. Believe me we ate lots of flopped bread because it was hard to find good bread flour in Haiti.
 After I came home from service I attempted bread baking & had plenty of flops of my own. I finally found a simple recipe that tasted good & didn't have funny ingredients. I still use that recipe for white bread. However this post is not focused on white bread but whole wheat bread. ;)
 When I was 6 months pregnant with Reagan I was having trouble getting good numbers on my glucose tolerance tests. Therefore I was given a food list of what I could & could not eat. White bread was a no no of course. So I started my search to find a recipe for whole wheat bread.If you have experience with bread baking you will already know that white & whole wheat flours are different. Therefore they produce different results in the finished product. I knew what I wanted it to look & taste like. Most of the recipes in my cookbooks proclaimed themselves to be "wholewheat" but would have at least 4 cups of white flour in it too. So I turned to pinterest, now we all know that if its on pinterest it is going to be fabulous.... WRONG!
 Such sorry looking little bricks of bread you have never seen. It was like all the yeast expired after the first rising.
 My sister-in-law Mary has always made wonderful whole wheat bread so in desperation I contacted her for help. And I found the recipe that works!It contained no evil white flour that I was trying to avoid & had no weird ingredients in it.

I am sure if you would prefer to use coconut oil instead of veg oil you could. I was amazed that even my husband that has ALWAYS preferred white bread now asks for whole wheat!
 I think one of the things that makes this recipe work better for me is the rising time. The pinterest recipe was having it rise for twice as long & it rose fine that first time. It was when I put it in pans that it would not rise anymore.

The only thing better then fresh from the oven white bread is fresh from the oven Whole wheat bread. :)
 I would love to hear what your tried & true bread baking tips are!

 Whole Wheat Bread
4 Cups water
1/2 Cup honey
3/4 Cup Oil
2 Tablespoons salt
3Tablespoons yeast
9 Cups whole wheat flour
Mix together everything except last 4 cups of flour. Let set 15 minutes, add remaining 4 cups of flour. Knead for 6 minutes in bosch mixer. Let rise 15 minutes, then put into pans & let rise again till it reaches the desired size you want it. :) Bake at 325 for 28 minutes.