6 cups freshly ground whole wheat bread flour
2 ¼ cups Kefir or buttermilk

¾ cups butter or combination of butter, oil etc.
melted
6T. warm water
3 t. yeast (or less, see note)
3 T honey
1 ½ t. sea salt (slightly heaped)
¾ t. baking soda
1 ½ c. white flour or pastry wheat flour or
combination

Mix first two ingredients in plastic, ceramic or glass bowl and soak, covered tightly 12-24 hours. We usually just soak it around 12 hours. Any longer and it does get sour. (You end up using your fingers, it seems really dry.)

Add remaining ingredients and mix well. Knead. Cover and rise 1-2 hours, until doubled. Punch down well, knead a bit and shape into loaves. Makes 2 – 2 pound loaves. Place in greased 9 X 5 loaf pans, cover with towel, let rise 1 to 2 hours until almost doubled. Bake in a 350 degree oven. Cover with foil after 15 or so minutes and bake at least another 20 to 25 more minutes until tests done. 190 or so degrees with an instant thermometer. Since the oven temp is low and the loaves are big, it takes longer than you would think to bake them. Sandwich rolls (about 4 ounces of dough each)cook in about 13-15 mins.

Notes:
We’ve never tried it with buttermilk, the kefir adds it’s yeast and that’s why we cut the baking yeast by almost half. We actually double this recipe and make 4 loaves and only use 3-4 teaspoons of yeast. We use equal parts butter, expeller pressed coconut oil and rice bran oil. We have a mixer, we don’t knead this by hand, except for the initial mixing of the flour and kefir. We’ve never tried making it in the food processor like NT directs. We use instant yeast and don’t proof it first like NT does.

I think that’s all, I’ve used it to make cinnamon rolls and raisin bread too. It’s a great all purpose dough recipe.