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Brown Bread
Updated March 9, 2024
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- Total Time
- 1 hour 40 minutes
- Prep Time
- 5 minutes
- Cook Time
- 1 hour 35 minutes
- Rating
- Notes
- Read community notes
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Ingredients
- 4cups/450 grams whole-wheat flour, preferably stone-ground
- 1teaspoon kosher salt (such as Diamond Crystal) or ½ teaspoon coarse kosher salt
- 1tablespoon molasses or treacle
- 2½ teaspoons active dry yeast
- 1teaspoon canola or other flavorless oil, for greasing
- 1tablespoon sesame or poppy seeds or a combination (optional)
Preparation
- Step 1
In a large bowl, mix the flour with the salt.
- Step 2
In a liquid measuring jug or small bowl, mix the molasses with 5 fluid ounces/150 milliliters of lukewarm water. Stir in the yeast and leave the jug somewhere warm for 5 minutes, or until the liquid develops a creamy froth.
- Step 3
Meanwhile, grease a 5- by 8-inch loaf pan with the oil and line the bottom and long sides with parchment paper to create a sling for the bread.
- Step 4
Pour the activated yeast mixture into the flour. Measure 10 fluid ounces/275 milliliters of tepid water into the jug, scraping and stirring any residual yeast into the water. Pour this into the flour.
- Step 5
Using your hand or a spoon, mix the flour and the liquid together to make a dough. It’ll be too wet to knead. Scrape the dough into the prepared loaf pan. If you’d like, sprinkle the top with sesame or poppy seeds or both.
- Step 6
Place the pan in a warm place (close to the stove is ideal). Pull a dish cloth tight over the top of the pan without letting it touch the dough, and leave the dough to rise until it reaches the top of the pan, 15 to 25 minutes. While the dough rises, heat the oven with a rack in the center to 450 degrees.
- Step 7
When the dough has nearly reached the top of the pan, remove the dish cloth and put the loaf on the center rack in the oven.
- Step 8
Bake for 20 minutes, then reduce the oven temperature to 400 degrees. Continue to bake for another 30 minutes or until the top looks nicely browned.
- Step 9
Remove the pan from the oven, then tip the loaf out of the pan, running a knife around the outside of the bread to release it if needed and holding the hot loaf with oven mitts or a clean dish towel. Discard the parchment paper, shake off loose seeds, and return the loaf — upside down — to the oven, setting it directly on the center rack. Bake for another 10 minutes, or until the loaf sounds hollow when you tap its bottom.
- Step 10
Cool the loaf on a rack for 10 minutes before slicing to enjoy warm. The loaf will keep well-wrapped at room temperature for up to 3 days.
Private Notes
Cooking Notes
Lukewarm is cuddly and cozy. Tepid is apathetic and indifferent. Oh, sorry. You asked about water... Lukewarm is in the 100-110 degree range - the ideal temperature for proofing yeast. Above 110 and you start running the risk of killing the poor yeast; below 100, the yeast will just sit there doing nothing. Tepid is just a tad warm in order to ease mixing ingredients into a liquid- Maybe the 75-90 degree range. Not too cold. Not too hot. Just right!
You can use instant yeast 1to1 with active dry yeast. Don’t proof the instant yeast, just add to the dry ingredients. Watch for the rise closely.
I was inspired to make this on a brisk, breezy March day in Austin. The result will make your house smell like heaven and make you feel like a baking genius for no effort at all. I used 4 mini-loaf pans instead of one large pan, reducing each of the cooking phases by about half, but otherwise followed the recipe exactly. The bread is splendid! Four lovely, sturdy little loaves. The crust is both crisp and yielding and the crumb is tender with a nutty, rich taste. Go make this everyone.
What kind of molasses best emulates treacle syrup? There seem to be many varieties. Do you think I can use dark fresh maple syrup?
A good recipe that worked the first time for me. Needs salted butter to overcome the bitterness of the whole wheat. Autolysis should greatly improve the bread: Mix only the water and flour, let rest 30-60 mins. Then proceed with the recipe. In autolysis enzymes in the wheat germ cleave some of the starches in the flour, generating tasty malt sugars that overcome whole wheat's bitterness. White-flour recipes, lacking germ/enzymes, mistakenly call a hydration step autolysis.
This recipe sounds lovely! For those of us who only keep one type of yeast around, would you consider adding instructions for using instant yeast instead of active? Thank you!
According to King Arthur Flour the yeast can be used interchangeably.
Why insist on using brand names like Diamond Crystal or unclear terms like "coarse kosher salt"? Both of which are terribly inaccurate when trying to estimate the actual salt content, since they can range from 10g to almost 20g of sodium per teaspoon. This stubborn and pretentious pattern ruins hundreds if not thousand's of people's recipes
The ingredient list is missing water: 425 ml, or 1.77 cup. I’d just take the whole amount of warm water and molasses to activate the yeast, and add my flour and salt mixture in. Easier this way. And if you don’t know what else to use the leftover molasses for - molasses are great in home-made granola. And they last a while so just make more loaves of bread!
Treacle is the British word for molasses You "can" use maple syrup, but maple syrup doesn't have the acidity that molasses does. Just so you know.
The brand name is critical when it comes to kosher salt. There are two main brands in the US, where this newspaper is based. The two are not equivalent for volume measurements. They are, of course, the same in grams, but the amounts are so small that most people don't have a scale to accurately measure that quantity. That said, I think "coarse kosher salt" may be an error, as "coarse salt" would suffice, and I wish they'd give a mass measurement for people who have an appropriate scale.
Bread dough is very forgiving. Yeast begins to die off at 120F. 140F will completely kill yeast. As long as your water is below 120F (105-110F is optimal), you should be fine.
Reminds me of a recipe I once saw on David Lebovitz's blog. Maybe the notes on that recipe would be helpful to some?
For those who are concerned about whether to proof yeast, whether they should use “instant” or “active” yeasts, and so on: Proving the yeast is only important or necessary if you have an old packet or jar lying dormant in your pantry (and really it should be under refrigeration!). If you know your yeast is good, skip that step—but make sure you consolidate the liquid and sugar you would have used into the body of the dough.
What is the difference between lukewarm and tepid water?
I’ve followed the directions perfectly. Did not turn out the very first time. Perfect every time after that except when I weighed the flour. What a mess!! So I’m back to measuring. I did however keep an eye on stickiness this time and did add 2oz more water since I’m playing around anyways. Dog just had hip replacement so we’re stuck in the house for 12 weeks. Gives me a lot of time to perfect some recipes. This loaf is currently in the oven but, the rise was the best yet.
I use whole grain spelt and it takes almost 2 hours to rise.
I made it with just over half whole wheat and the rest unbleached because that’s what I had and it was delicious (except for needing more salt). It probably needed more water for 4 cups flour. I did only 18 minutes for step 2 of baking, oven off for step 3. Turns out Beard on Bread, 50 years ago, published the inn’s older version from Allen’s mother-in-law, and the comment suggestions in 2024 get you very close to that version — more salt, more molasses, less flour.
Easy and delicious. I like to mix a cup of raw sunflower seeds into the flour before adding the liquid.
Am I the only one who added a bunch more water? I needed about 1 more cup so the flour would mix to “sticky” level. I like this bread. So minimal. No sugar- just a TB of molasses. I like the crusty outside. I wonder how it would freeze.
Bread - pretty much any kind - freezes well.
This bread is outstanding. I worried that it would be tough, but it has a fluffy, muffiny quality with a satisfying crust. The flavor is wonderful, especially given the quick rise. The molasses provides a savory, slightly bitter edge, and there is a vinous note from the yeast fermentation. Really nice recipe.
For water temperature, I use the old baby-bottle trick, running water from the hot tap over my wrist until it feels the same temperature as me. As I fill the measuring cup, the water warms slightly. This is the perfect temperature!
I’ve baked this bread 3 times over the last few weeks, using both the NYT recipe and David Lebovitz’s version. This last time it was perfect. I doubled the molasses, and followed Lebovitz’s cooking instructions. You bake it for 20 minutes at 450, and then take it out of the pan and bake it upside down right on the rack for another 20 minutes. The bread should have an internal temperature of 190. This is 25 minutes less cooking time! Every oven is different - I’d err on the side of less cooking.
Hmmm. My first attempt at this bread came out perfectly, but two subsequent loafs have collapsed during the bake, and needed more time to fully bake. I weighed everything, but the dough seems very wet. More like a batter, in fact. I suppose it is the flour, which is French stone ground whole wheat ( I live in France.) very odd. I will try again with less water.
I added sunflower seeds into the dough as well as on top. Increase salt to 2t. Delicious, right out of the oven.
Just tried this today. I bake bread a lot. This is definitely going into the rotation. I too was confused by the pan size, but used a 5x9 when I saw the amount of dough. Weighed the flour. Baked it on convection bake at 425 and the 350. Was done right on time. Only did 5 min without the pan as it was already at over 200. Loved the hard, crispy crust. The end piece had just the right amount of crunch. I would increase the salt a bit,
For the American cooks out there, there is a difference between dry ounces and fluid ounces. 1 measured cup of flour does not weigh 8 ounces, it weighs just over 4 ounces and weighs 125 grams. This recipe worked for me when I measured 2 cups of flour (the 16 oz mark on the cup) and measured 15 oz of water.
Thank you NYT for this fabulous recipe! I made it with King Arthur 13.2% protein which is what my local grocery carried. I made it as written except to use instant yeast and thrilled with the results. I’ve made it many times since then. It is great for breakfast, great with soup for dinner and the molasses gives it a lovely flavor. My thanks also to the early reviewer who said they made it at high altitude with no adjustments as I live at 5,000 ft.
What would happen if I added an egg? Or a bit of yogurt and maples syrup instead of molasses?
I baked this for St. Patrick’s Day dinner. I used stone ground whole wheat flour Everyone loved the aroma and flavor of the bread. I thought the crust was too thick and hard. I don’t mind a bit of crunch in the crust. If anyone knows how to make the crust a wee bit thinner and not hard, please let me know. Thanks!
Bake it less, to only 190 internal temp
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