Whole wheat bread

[Atash Hagmahani]

OK, in response for a request for a 100% whole wheat bread recipe, here is one.

This is a little tricky, because it involves the use of something called a "poolish"; it's a wet batter allowed to ferment for a while, before adding more flour. The purpose of the poolish is to lighten up what would otherwise be a heavy loaf. Someone I know will be pleased to know that it's an eastern European idea.

The instructions are screwed up, because they were written in metric units and then poorly-converted into Imperial units by someone who does not know how to do the conversion correctly. They frequently mix up fluid ounces and avoirdupois ounces. I took my best guess, but yell "Tilt!" if something seems wrong.

I also took my best guess at how much instant yeast to use, as cake yeast which the recipe calls for is no longer sold in the USA. I tried to err on the side of caution to prevent overproofing, which would ruin the loaf.

The instructions call for 1 lb (2 cup) loaf pans x 2. I would probably make one long loaf. Use your good judgment.

Poolish:

1/2 tsp instant yeast
9 FLUID ounces tepid water
9 avoirdupois ounces whole wheat bread flour (approximately 2 cups)

whisk first the yeast, then the flour into the water, to obtain a batter. Cover with a clean kitchen towel and let it rest 3-5 hours. DO NOT EXCEED 5 HOURS or the batter is likely to collapse.

Mix the following together:

9 avoirdupois ounces whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp instant yeast
2 tsp salt

Then mix together:

the dry flour mixture
3 more liquid oz water
the poolish that has already fermented 3-5 hours

You can use a bowl scraper to mix the ingredients. Once mixed, I suggest letting them rest for about 10 minutes--it makes them easier to knead.

Now you need to knead the continental way, which means PULLING not PUSHING the dough. It seems to work better, because it straightens out the gluten strands. You sort of slap one end down on the counter, pull, fold over, pick it up again, slap one end down on the counter, pull, etc, in fairly fast succession (this is a significant amount of work; if you are not used to it, you may get sore muscles the next day), for about 5 minutes. You can tell the dough is kneaded, when it develops a fairly silky texture and stays fairly intact. It should pull off the counter, and off your fingers, fairly readily at that point.

Shape the dough into a ball, and let rest in a lightly floured bowl, covered with a clean towel, for 15 minutes.

Turn the dough out using a scraper, gently pushing it out DON'T TEAR THE GLUTEN STRANDS.
Divide into 2 balls, and let them rest for another 15 minutes.
Shape into loaves (to do that, you sort of flatten them out, and fold into a tight roll, and pinch all the seams shut), and put into loaf pans that have been lightly "greased" with a little butter.

Let rise approximately 1 hour or until almost doubled. Fire up the oven to 475F about half an hour before it's time to bake.

Just before baking, dust the tops with a little whole wheat flour (I think bran would work better), and mist the oven before closing the door (watch out for the oven light, which will shatter if you spray it). Bake for about 30-35 minutes. The bottom will sound hollow when tapped if it is done.

His loaf looks a little too dark to me. There is no sugar in the dough, but I am wondering how much heat whole wheat can take. I suggest experimenting if anything goes wrong. This is a French recipe so they like wet doughs and some oven spring.

Adapted from Dough, by Richard Bertinet

[Lady Lilya]

how much cake yeast did it call for?  my yeast packets give equivalency info.

[Lady Lilya]

maybe the butter makes the loaves darker?

[Atash Hagmahani]

how much cake yeast did it call for?  my yeast packets give equivalency info.

5 grams for the poolish, 5 grams for the dry flour.

[Lady Lilya]

The yeast packet says:
1 envelope dry yeast (1/4 oz) = 2 1/4 teaspoons = 1 cake fresh yeast (0.6 oz)

My calculations:
first metricizing it: 0.6 oz of cake yeast = 17 grams of cake yeast
17 divided by 2 and a quarter...
that puts a teaspoon of dry yeast at around 7.5 grams of cake yeast
if your recipe calls for 5 grams of cake yeast, that is exactly 2/3 of a teaspoon of dry yeast
 

My measuring spoons only have powers of 2.  I would probably just eyeball it.

[Lady Lilya]

Not wanting to use a fraction of a yeast packet, I put all the numbers into a spreadsheet and determined that by multiplying the amounts by 1.69 I could scale it up to use the whole yeast packet.

So:

for the pooling
half the packet of yeast
15.2 fluid ounces tepid water
3 1/3 cups flour

for the dry mix
3 1/3 cups flour
the other half of the yeast packet
3 1/3 tsp of salt

the additional water for when you mix the pooling and the dry mix
5 fluid ounces

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This means I would have to eyeball a fifth of an ounce of water, and a third of a teaspoon of salt. 

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Atash, do you foresee any issues with scaling up the recipe like this?

The alternative would be to store the extra yeast in between recipes.  Then I have to worry about moisture getting into it, which is a real concern.  (For anyone who is curious, I estimate that roughly every 25 bakings, using first what I have already stored and only opening a new packet when necessary, I would finally have zero leftover yeast to store.)

[Atash Hagmahani]

You can scale up bread recipes, but you will either need to divide the dough into more loaves to keep them a consistent size, or lower the temperature for a bigger loaf.

Also, it is significantly harder to knead bigger batches of dough. The roughly 4 cups of the original recipe is about the optimal amount to handle. Too small and it gets hard to get the dough to stick to the counter to stretch it...too much and it gets hard to handle.

Yeast proportions are surprisingly forgiving, actually; I would keep the recipe the same, and just eyeball the yeast. 2/3 tsp is not that hard to measure out. Because yeast varies in its activity, both according to the yeast, and the ambient temperature of your kitchen, you always have to watch the dough and compensate with the rising time anyway.

[Lady Lilya]

I just noticed that seems like a lot of water.  The other day when we were talking about bread, you estimated a cup of water for a 6-cup-of-flour recipe.  This would come out to over 2 cups.

[Atash Hagmahani]

Leigh, there must have been a misunderstanding...probably one of those things where our conversation gets out of synch due to the slight time lag typing.

The other day when we were talking about bread, you estimated a cup of water for a 6-cup-of-flour recipe.

85% hydration, which is a little on the high side but fairly typical of chewy, "big-hole" bread (like a Ciabatta), would come out somewhere in the vicinity of TWO cups for a 6 cup of flour recipe.

A cup of water for 6 cups of flour sounds more like noodle dough. I don't think the gluten would even form under those circumstances--the bran would absorb most of it and you'd have a devil of a time even getting the dough to hold together.

Wet doughs might be hard to handle, but up to a point they result in stronger gluten, and the excess water just evaporates away--turning to steam and opening up the crust in the process.

BTW, something is seriously wrong with the translator's conversion of weight of flour to cups. That can't be "about 4 cups of flour", or else there is not ENOUGH water. I weighed the flour when I used the book, because I know Europeans weigh flour, and I have a reasonably accurate digital scale. I think it is over 3 but under 4 cups of flour. I suggest weighing the flour; do you have a scale?

[Lady Lilya]

Yes, my scale has both metric and imperial.  What weight of flour does the original recipe call for?

[Atash Hagmahani]

9 ounces (weight not volume) each for the poolish and the flour you add later, which sounds about right to me.

In retrospect, it seems to me that a balance scale is far more accurate than a digital scale! The reason is that it tells you if you are over or under. A digital scale tells you that you are under but not that you are over until you hit the next increment.

Balance scales will also last longer than the electronics in a digital scale. I would like one, but they have gotten hard to find. I should look around to see if I can get one. Like cast-iron cookware, this seems like a tool for "the long haul".

[Lady Lilya]

So, I made this on Monday.  I didn't have any internet connection that day, so I didn't update you on how it came out. 

I made my scaled-up quantity.  9 ounces came to 1 2/3 cups, after tapping it so it would settle.  My scaled-up quantity of 15.21 ounces came out to 2 1/3 cups.  My scale is not digital, or a balance scale.  I guess it is based on springs.  I have always fount it accurate enough for my needs.

I felt really good about how the pooling looked and smelt after sitting for 4 hours.  Then when I got to the point of shaping it into loaves, I thought it could be a bit drier.  It was sticking to me VERY much.  But I made do.  And i was otherwise really happy with its texture at that point.  Extremely long strands.  It was beautiful, and with only 5 minutes of kneading total!  (In my KitchenAid, btw.  I don't own a KitchenAid just to knead by hand!  It had no trouble with the scaled-up quantity.)  As for the finished product, I was surprised to find it more dense than I expected, and smelling more yeasty than I like.  I was thinking how you said bread recipes are forgiving about yeast.  So maybe next time I will adjust the ratios by adding more flour.  Then it will be both drier and less yeasty.  Probably should adjust the salt proportionally to the flour.  So, that is what I plan to do my next go around.  Maybe tomorrow, maybe Friday.

Also, I didn't mist the oven.  I have seen other recipes that call for a pan of water in the bottom of the oven.  I put a ramekin of water in the oven while it preheated, and took it out when I put the bread in (fearing the water would all evaporate and my ramekin would be injured).

I also didn't dust the tops with more flour.  It seemed like it would be more appealing to us without it.   

[Atash Hagmahani]

Let's figure this out.

The dough probably should be wetter than you are used to. First of all the bran in whole wheat is going to absorb some, and it's the wetness of the dough that helps the gluten form more easily.

I should videotape myself kneading, to show you that it can be worked.

Did you get much oven spring? That's when the bread rises more in the oven, from the water in the dough turning to steam. It is likely that the author was counting on some oven-spring. If you didn't get much (or worse, it deflated in the oven! in which case, let me know...), it's possible your dough was under-proofed (or worse, overproofed).

I assume that you used King Arthur white whole wheat, right? It might be a little lower in gluten than hard red wheat. I should try it myself and figure out what to do.

[Lady Lilya]

Why would it be wetter than I am used to?  I have never made white bread, but I have made whole wheat dozens of times.

I figure if I am spending 90% of the time trying to get the dough to stick to itself instead of my hands, and end up with smaller loaves because it is all stuck to me, then it was too wet.

Yes, I got oven spring.

No, I used Bob's whole wheat.  Not the white whole wheat.  Just the regular whole wheat.  I have a lot of that in my pantry, so that is what I intend to use for my bread-making in the next few months.

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So, take 2 today.

I rounded the flour up, from 2 1/3 times two,  to 2 1/2 times two.  So, it raised the total amount of flour in the recipe from 4 2/3 cups to 5 cups.  I also added maybe half a teaspoon to 3/4 of a teaspoon more salt.  (I eyeballed it.) 

This time it was considerably more dry.  Maybe too dry.  I haven't cut into them yet, so I guess we will see if it was good or bad later tonight or tomorrow morning.

Other than being more dry when I shaped it, there was no noticeable difference at any stage.

[Atash Hagmahani]

I will try this recipe myself. I will videotape myself doing it, and if I don't flop, I'll distribute the videotape.

I've never used a poolish before, so all bets off.

I will need to find some whole wheat bread flour. I have difficulty storing it but maybe with summer ending I could keep a bag of it from going rancid. I keep whole wheat pastry flour on hand, in small quantities, but have had difficulty keeping white whole wheat from going rancid. Because I was not using the poolish method, I could only do maximum about 1/2 whole wheat. I used to add it to a lot of things, but it was going rancid so fast that a 5 lb bag would end up largely wasted.

The show will also need to wait for me to have enough time. Maybe Sunday?