Homemade, whole-wheat, and heavenly!

My husband got me a bread machine for Christmas, but couldn't wait till then, so he had me open it a week early! (I had remarked one day that even though we're trying to cut out bad carbs, not all bread is bad. And I mentioned that I'm sure you could make healthy bread at home, but it was such a hassle. Thanks for listening, Honey!)

First, we tried the recipe for whole wheat bread that came with the  machine. It was so dense... ugh! So I hit All Recipes and found this recipe; it was the second one we tried, and we haven't tried any others -- it was a home run! And as toast... yum!

We made it daily for the next four days. (In our defense, the kids were home from college, so it wasn't just the two of us snarfing it down!)

A few tips:

1. I used the method I found in another recipe there, which is to put the water, honey and yeast in the bread pan first and let the yeast bloom while you put together the dry ingredients. I know, I know -- that's opposite of what the manufacturer and most other recipes recommend, but it worked great. The bread came out with the perfect balance of light fluffiness and having just enough texture to feel satisfyingly healthy.

2. Even though it's whole wheat, use the "basic" and "light crust" settings on the bread machine.

3. In my machine, I actually had better luck scaling the recipe up to 16 servings. (Which is really easy to do on All Recipes; it does the math for you!)

4. If you like the recipe as much as we did, here's a time-saving tip: once you have all your ingredients in the machine, make another batch of the dry ingredients (leaving out the yeast) and pack it in a gallon baggie. That way, you only have to dirty those measuring cups once and you'll save yourself a little time every other time you make it!