Whole Wheat Orange Bread (Vegan)

I have a confession to make. I was so proud of the fact that I had not bought a single loaf of bread from the store for almost 6 1/2 years. That is not true anymore. I have been so busy with work and other stuff that I ended up buying bread couple of times last month. When I was looking at the ingredients (I picked up the loaf with minimum number of ingredients and that I could read and understand), one of the ingredient was vinegar. In the parenthesis,  they had mentioned 'as preservative'. I was kind of surprised. I never thought that few TBSP of vinegar in a bread loaf can actually make it stay soft for longer. So, I have been wanting to experiment on those lines. Since vinegar is an acid and any citrus juice is similar to it, I used orange juice in this bread recipe. I added a little bit of baking soda to help make it soft since this 100 % whole wheat flour bread does not have any vital wheat gluten added. Perfect for those who live in a place where you cannot get vital wheat gluten. Loaf is darker since my whole wheat flour is a bit darker in color. Don't worry about the orange taste in the bread. You will not be able to taste it at all. In fact, orange juice kind of makes the whole wheat flour taste better.

One Year Back - Eggless Chocolate chip oat cookies
Two Years Back - Making of mermaid cake
Ingredients: 
Whole Wheat Flour - 3 1/2 cups (Start with 3 1/4 cups and use more if needed)
Orange Juice - 1/2 cup fresh or 100 % juice without added sugar
Salt - 1 tsp
Molasses - 2 TBSP
Oil - 2 TBSP
Water - 3/4 cup
Active dry yeast - 2 1/2 tsp  (Or use 2 tsp instant yeast)
Baking Soda - 1/2 tsp


To brush before baking: (Optional)
Non dairy milk - 2 tsp
Oil - 1 tsp

Method:
Warm the water and orange juice mixture in a microwave. 

To make dough using Bread machine:
Place the ingredients in the order of oil, orange juice and water mixture, salt, molasses, whole wheat flour, baking soda, yeast and start on dough setting. Let the cycle complete.

To make dough by hand:
Refer to this post.

To bake:
Shape the dough into a loaf. Grease a 9 X 5 loaf pan with vegetable oil spray. Place the shaped dough in the pan. Cover with oiled plastic wrap and let it rise above the rim of the pan (about 40 minutes or more). Towards the end of the rise time, preheat the oven to 375 F. Brush the loaf with the mixture of milk and oil if desired. Place in the oven and bake for 20 minutes. Rotate the pan and reduce the temperature to 350 F. Bake for 10 - 15 minutes or until the internal temperature registers 190 - 200 F. Or the loaf sounds hollow when tapped at the bottom. Cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Remove from the pan to cool on the wire rack completely.

I am sending this to 'yeastspotting' - weekly collection of 'yeast preparations'.