My husband loves this bread. Correction, loved it. The last time I made it (3 days ago), it was gone in less than 1 day. I got half a slice. Believing it to be a rousing success, I made an even larger loaf yesterday. Unfortunately, my husband watched me make it this time which, inevitably, caused WWIII a little distress seeing as how, you know, it used sugar. Cue horror music now.

There were snotty rants discussions of how sugar is needed for bread, sending him bounding to the fridge to look at our other bread’s wrapper (because “bread does NOT NEED SUGAR!”), and him swearing off the bread only to cut another 1/4 slice (which he took directly from the loaf, leaving it oddly disfigured) 20 seconds later. To which I may or may not have responded, with all the grace of a cranky 12 year old, “DON’T YOU DARE EAT MY BREAD! THAT’S MY BREAD! It’ll just make you SICK anyway.” Because arguing about how I, apparently, cook bread entirely incorrectly and how said bread is going to kill my family thanks to the completely normal inordinate amount of sugar in the recipe, may have ticked me off perturbed me, just a tad.

The Boy and I liked it, anyway.

So, if you’re up for making over-sugared, death causing whole wheat bread for your family, the following is the recipe I used. It’s for an Oster 5811, 1 1/2 lb loaf bread machine. This is for the full 1 1/5 lb size.

1 1/4 cups water
2 Tbsp butter, softened
3 cups whole wheat flower
1/4 cup packed brown sugar (or “poison in sweetened crystal form”)
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 3/4 tsp bread machine yeast, quick-acting active dry yeast, or regular active dry yeast