White Whole Wheat Olive Oil Bread (and Smashed Berries)

For some reason, I spent the better part of last week daydreaming about a PB&J on homemade wheat bread. There were only two problems:

1. I had no homemade wheat bread.

2. I had no jelly.

Problem #1 was easy enough to remedy. I googled millions of recipes and narrowed it down to six. Sometimes when I bake I like to set out with a million options and pretend like when the time comes to measure out ingredients, I’ll impulsively someknow know which one will be the best and decisively make a decision.

Um.

Yeah. So I had a delicious-looking option, a puffy-looking, perfect-results-promised video option, a King Arthur option, an “easy” option, and an award-winning option. There was pretty much no way I could go wrong with any of them.

And at the last second I impulsively chose…

ONE I’VE ALREADY MADE BEFORE.

I just couldn’t shake my vision of a fluffy but tight-crumbed slice of bread fragrant and warm from the oven. This loaf was a safe bet for the tight-crumbedness.

As for the jelly, I thought I would be so smart and original and smash up leftover blackberries in place of jam on my sandwich only to find…that of course blackberry smashes are like, all the rage.

You, too, can achieve results like the mangled bread slice above by not using a bread knife. I promise that nothing was dysfunctional about the bread itself, only the knife.

IT WAS STILL REALLY GOOD.

Olive Oil Bread

Tweaked from Post Punk Kitchen (LOVE this blog!!) only in that I used all white whole wheat flour and made one loaf instead of two baguettes. Also I used the Perfect Rise yeast because the memory of the failed hamburger-buns-turned-hockey-pucks still haunts me and Perfect Rise guarantees…perfect results 🙂

3/4 cup warm water
1 tablespoon sugar
1 packet active dry yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons )
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil (plus extra for the bowl and drizzling)
2 1/4 to 2 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt

Find the rest of the directions here.