I bake my bread from home-ground wheat now.

I used to bake bread maybe once or twice a year and never varied from
one recipe as it was "too much work" to experiment with.

Then I got a bread machine and experimented like crazy making several
different types of loaves a week. I gave it away shortly before
seriously starting to bake here.

I started baking all our bread about a year and a half ago with a
white flour recipe, gradually moving to whole wheat, and eventually
taking the plunge and buying a grinder to grind my own hard wheat (I
also grind soft wheat for non-yeast recipes). I have also learned
that the "too much" work is less than baking a batch of cookies...
just have to be home voer a longer period of time. Lots of errors
along the way, and some "interesting" breads, but nothing completly
inedible occured during the whole process.

One of the "secrets" to my bread-baking was getting a really good
mill. My mill grinds so finely on one pass that I cannot sift any
bran out. I got the "Country Living Mill" and hubby attached a
bicycle to it for easier grinding.

The other secret is just the freshly ground wheat itself. I could
never get decent-tasting pancakes or biscuits out of whole wheat
flour, but once I started grinding my own, great food resulted. I
notice a huge difference if I grind flour right before baking versus
even the day before. Freshly-ground is *awesome*.

Finally, my last "secret" is making damp, sticky dough rather than
smooth dough like for white bread. It's more work to knead and you
have to go by the feel of the gluten rather than the look of the dough
ball.

My favorite current recipe is:

Dissolve 1 TB sugar in 1/2 cup warm water and sprinkle 2 1/2 tsp bulk
yeast on top in my largest bowl.

In 4 cup measure, melt 1/2 cup butter in microwave. Add 2 1/4 cups
warm water, 1/2 cup honey, 1 beaten egg, 1 1/2 tsp salt and a pinch of
baking soda. Mix together and pour into yeast mixture.

Mix in 3 cups rolled oats, then 5-6 cups freshly-ground hard wheat
flour, just enough until it forms a ball, but is still very sticky.
It is important not to try to get the same texture you do with white
flour or your bread will be hard.

Knead 10-15 minutes.Dump into buttered bowl, turn over, covered with
damp cloth and let rise.

Once doubled, punch down and shape into 2 large (meatloaf pan) or 3
small (regular bread pan) loaves , place in buttered pans, sprinkle a
TB of rolled oats over the top, and let rise again until dough peeks
over pan top.

Preheat oven to 450, place risen loaves in and turn heat down to 350
in ten minutes. Bake another 30-45 minutes until done.