Bread bread wheat bread

I used to bake bread all the time -- and you do have to bake quite often if you want to do a really good job with so-called "artisinal" loaves. The sensitivity to various aspects of what's going on, like how much water your flour is absorbing, or how the ambient temperature is affecting your proofing, is much better if you practice all the time. Shaping, too, is easy to get rusty at. But all the bread I made was one hundred percent white flour, and that's pretty much verboten in S.'s diet, so I stopped.

Today I decided to get my toes wet with wholemeal baking, after feeling encouraged by Fortune Elkins' comments on the virtues of white wheat flour. I don't do sourdough, because I've never had the knack for it, and because maintaining a chef is assuredly something that calls for very frequent bread-baking. But I do like a fair amount of tang in my loaves, so I usually go in for some kind of pre-ferment. A pre-ferment involves making up some percentange of your dough (often in different proportions of flour to water than your final dough) ahead of time and giving it a period in which to devolop tasty fatty acids. Mm, fatty acids. I recently learned that temperatures between about 50 and 60 degrees Farenheit are optimal for acid production; if you're already working with sourdough, that can be overkill, but for me, it turns out to be nice to give the pre-ferments a chance at that golden temperature. Refrigeration will bring your pre-ferment down through this temperature range handily.

I also like to make quite a wet dough and knead it only so much, so as not to overwork and oxidize the flour, which makes bread more insipid. You can firm up a slack dough without working it too much or adding much extra flour by a few rounds of "turning" the dough in the first hour or so of rising. Turning consists of tipping your dough onto a lightly floured workspace, spreading it out gently, folding it up like an envelope, and popping it back in the bowl.

Finally, salt is important in a loaf of bread -- it counters insipidness and also retards yeast growth so you can have a longer fermentation period. But if you put it in too early, it can interfere with your dough's developing the best extensibility. So it should go in a bit late in the process, and pre-ferments containing it should, too.

For these loaves, I made the pre-ferments with white flour (King Arthur all-purpose) and used white wheat for the rest. The resulting proportion was something like 40:60. Turned out dang good, too, with the desirable chewy glutenous crumb. I'm going to try a higher proportion of wheat flour next time. I'm hoping I can gradually up the percentage and learn to work with it as I go.

SCRAP DOUGH
1/4 teaspoon instant yeast
1/2 cup lukewarm water
115 grams unbleached all-purpose flour
3/8 teaspoon salt


Mix the yeast and water. Take 1/3 c. of this mixture and reserve the rest for the poolish. Mix flour, yeasted water, and salt, and knead the soft dough for about five minutes. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for about three hours, then refrigerate until morning.

POOLISH
1 Tablespoon of the yeast water
2/3 cup additional lukewarm water
150 grams unbleached all-purpose flour


Mix to make a loose batter. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit out on the counter for about eight hours, then refrigerate until morning.

(Notice that it makes sense to mix up these pre-ferments some time in the afternoon.)

THE BREAD
320 grams white wheat flour
1/4 teaspoon instant yeast
1 cup lukewarm water
the pre-ferments
2 teaspoons salt


Mix the flour and yeast in the bowl of your mixer, or any large bowl if you're doing it by hand. Add the water to the poolish and stir to mix. Add this to the flour mixture, stir, and knead just long enough to bring it together. Cover and let sit for half an hour.

Break up the scrap dough and add it and the SALT* to the rested dough. Knead until smooth and strong, about ten minutes.

Let rise, covered, for about three hours, turning after 20, 40, and 60 minutes. Divide the dough and form into rough cylinders. Cover and let rest about thirty minutes. Form your loaves on a peel or parchment-lined baking sheet, cover with a cloth, and let proof an hour or two (more if it's chilly, less if it's warm). Preheat your oven to 425° F. Slash the loaves and pop 'em in the oven. Throw a few ice cubes onto the bottom of the oven and close the door up quick.

Bake about 45 minutes, turning once. Let the loaves cool at least two hours before you cut them.

* This was mistakenly written as "and the flour" for YEARS. Sorry about that.

Comments

[frelkins]

hiya!

thanks for the link. you're a sweetie and your loaves look gorgeous.

the discovery of white whole-wheat flour is something isn't it? red whole-wheat flour does have that slightly bitter taste going on and for some reason always bakes up heavier.

the white whole wheat is more palatable to most people. try using it in a rustic slack italian loaf with a nice biga. . .

happy baking,

f

[Opheliac9]

Mmm... that looks goooood! I have a bread machine that my boyfriend got me a while ago, but the loaves always come out with a super-thick, hard crust. More often than not, they're small loaves to boot.

ANYway... your site just shows us all the wonderful goodies a person can create from scratch... thanks so much for giving us a bit of imagination in the kitchen!

[aleza]

could you possibly post flour quantities in cups, for those of us who lack kitchen scales? i know there's no exact amounts you can give in breadmaking, but a range would help.

also, why the scrap dough and the poolish? what does one do that the other doesn't?

[frelkins]

lemme just step in here long enough to say that making bread with volume measurements just leads to heartache in the long run.

weight measurements based on the baker's formula is the way to go.

i like french breads to be 65 to 68% hydrated by the baker's formula. that is, you use however much water equals 65% of the flour weight in the recipe.

for example, if your recipe uses (1 lb., 500 grams) 16 oz. flour, then for 65% hydration, you should use 10.4 oz water. because 10.4 is 65% of 16.

and don't add any more water or any more flour. keep to that total amount.

this is the way professionals make bread, and the results are amazingly superior. a good recipe for bread in fact is 65% hydration, 2% salt, 2% yeast.

the 2% is also based on the 16 oz. flour weight, which in this case would be about 1/3 oz. using this method, i can make as much bread or as little as i like, whether using 1,000 lbs flour or just 1.

baking by volume is just too inaccurate and often ends up creating dense, heavy, clunky bricks; not delicious, light bread.

investing the US$50 in a good electronic kitchen scale is the single best thing you can do to improve your bread, imvho.

as for the poolish, making that bit of dough up ahead of time and letting it ferment some in advance improves the flavor of the bread and its keeping quality.

again, this is a professional technique. the scrap dough is the remainder of the flour and water in the recipe needed to create the full loaf.

using a poolish and baking by weight is one reason that tiger's loaves are so cookbook-picture perfect. i'm sure they taste great too and keep without staling a fair amount of time!

[redfox]

Thanks -- you've done my work for me! Another element that the poolish contributes is making the dough more extensible; that is, helping to deveop the gluten. One advantage of using both a poolish and a scrap dough is that you can take advantage of the greater extensibility of the pre-ferment before the autolyse period (that resting period before you add salt and do the real kneading) and also take post-autolyse advantage of the extra-flavorful slow ferment you get in the salted scrap dough.

A good book with information on these strategies and useful recipes, too, is Artisan Baking Across America. The proportions and timing I used here are a variation on the Acme basic baguette recipe as it's given there.