Baking bread with homeground wheat

We have a really good recipe that works great with store bought flour. Not so great with home ground flour. hmm not sure why. It was very dense and dry. That was the first try.

This was my second try:
I added some unbleached white flour to my wheat flour (not much)and used less flour
This time the bread turned out yummy.

Here is the recipe:

2 c. + 4 TBs warm (not hot)water
2 tsp. Active dry yeast
1/4 C. sugar (we have used honey, a combination of honey and molasses, or evaported cane juice as a sub and they turned out great too. The sugar is to feed the yeast.)
1 tsp. salt
1/2 .c canola oil (we usually use cocnut oil you can use olive oil but you can taste the difference. some people like that. you can even knead in some italian seasonings.)

Start with the water yeast and sugar. That way the yeast can be "proofing" while you are adding the other stuff. We just put it all in our stand mixer bowl and then we start mixing it with our dough hooks and adding the flour.

The recipe calls for 5 1/2 C. of flour but we wound up using about 4 3/4 c. of flour because the dough was getting too dry.

let it rise for about 45 min then knead it. Let it rise for another 45 min, knead again and either put it in a loaf pan or form it into a loaf and cut slits on the top(on my stone is my favorite way). At this point you can bake it or you can let it rise for a little while longer and then bake it. Letting it rise for 20 min or so makes it look prettier. If you are in a hurry and just want to eat it. Skip the last rise it is for asthetic purposes only.

I like a crip crust so I rub my bread with oil before baking it.

Bake at 350 for about 45 min. After I take it out of the oven, I rub the surface down with a stick of butter. yum.