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This simple but delicious vegan whole wheat bread recipe is whole food plant based compliant–and it’s loaded with tasty herb flavor. With baking and resting times, it takes about 2 hours start to finish. Actual active work time, though, is only about 15 minutes–kneed time is 2 minutes! So, get your baking timers ready and let’s get cooking! For this recipe, I used Bobs Red Mill Organic Whole Wheat Pastry Flour. It’s a little more expensive, but it’s really good and worth the extra cost to me.
Vegan Whole Wheat Herb Bread
Equipment
- oven
- large mixing bowl
Ingredients
Yeast Mix
- 1 cup warm water
- 1 teaspoon molasses
- 2 teaspoons instant yeast
Dry Ingredients
- 2¼ cups whole wheat pastry flour I use Bob's Red Mill flour
- 2 teaspoons onion powder
- 2 teaspoons dried oregano
- 2 teaspoons dried basil
- 1 teaspoon rosemary
- ½ teaspoon garlic powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
Instructions
- In a small bowl, mix warm water, molasses, and instant yeast. Let sit for about 5 minutes.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine and mix all dry ingredients.
- Pour yeast mix into the bowl of dry ingredients. Start mixing with a fork. Then, when a dough ball starts forming, use your hands. Mix until all flour in incorporated into the dough ball.
- Place dough ball on a flat surface that has been dusted with a small amount of flour (I use a wood cutting board). Then kneed the dough for 2 minutes, until you have nice, smooth dough consistency.
- Put your dough into/onto the baking container/sheet you will put in the oven. Cover and let sit for about an hour, until the dough has about doubled in size.
- Bake at 350° for 35 minutes.
- Enjoy with a nice spread or your favorite soup.
What’s Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
You’ve certainly heard of whole wheat flour and whole wheat bread–the stuff that’s good for us but doesn’t always taste the best, at least not to everyone. And you’ve most likely heard of pastry flour too–the stuff that tastes great in the form of cakes and doughnuts, and all the other bready deserts that we love to eat but don’t because we care about our health! What in the world, though, is whole wheat pastry flour, and, more importantly, can I eat it without feeling guilty? Well, yes and no!
Flour Refresher Course
First, let’s have a quick look at what, exactly, flour is. Flour is simply the wheat plant ground down into a powder. Whole wheat flour is the whole plant, including all three parts–bran, endosperm, and germ–ground down and bagged up for our consumption. White flour, on the other hand, has the bran and the germ stripped out before being ground down–meaning it consists only of the endosperm.
Bread Flour VS Pastry Flour VS Cake Flour
OK, I remember exactly what flour is, and I know the difference between white and wheat, but what’s this “pastry flour” stuff? Simply put, the differences between the three main types of flour are the protein percentages and how finely the wheat is ground down. Bread flour has the most protein and is ground down the least, which means it’s more dense–less fluffy. Pastry flour has less protein than bread flour and is more finely ground, making it good for recipes that are a little lighter than bread, like muffins and pancakes! Finally, cake flour has the least amount of protein and is ground down to a very fine powder, making it good for, you guessed it, cakes!
Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
White pastry flour tastes great! The problem, though, is that it provides us with very little nutrition because the bran and germ is stripped out of it. Whole wheat, on the other hand, has both the bran and the germ ground up with it, meaning it provides us with more nutrition. The problem is that it makes food more dense and less appealing in terms of flavor to many people. What’s the solution? Use whole wheat (contains the bran, the germ, and the endosperm) flour that is lower in protein and ground to a finer consistency–that’s whole wheat pastry flour.
The Vegan Whole Wheat Bread Recipe Above
So, does that mean your vegan whole wheat bread recipe is healthy and that I can eat as much as I want? Well, if you look at the nutrition card, you’ll see that it does have a good amount of fiber and iron, with only .7 grams of fat, which means it is relatively healthy. Look again, though, and you’ll also see that one loaf has 1072 calories! So, if you make a nice soup and have a slice of whole wheat bread from the recipe above with it, then it’s great. You get some relatively healthy calories and lots of fiber that will fill you up even though your main course is a light soup–all for just 134 calories (one slice).
On the other hand, if you roll out of bed, toast up the whole loaf, and then smother it in hummus with tahini, you’ll be eating enough calories for the whole day before you’ve even had a chance to put your shoes on! So, eat and enjoy but just be mindful of the calories!
It is simple and delicious. If using active dry yeast, use 1 1/2 teaspoons.