The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Honey Wheat--advice needed

stephsoundoff's picture
stephsoundoff

Honey Wheat--advice needed

I am working with an active starter that is about a month old. I'm trying to come up with a recipe that is less sour, that my kids might actually eat. So far my recipe seems to be getting there. Now my "trouble" is that my loaf has more of an open crumb. It is delicious, but it doesn't really make great peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I'll post a link to the recipe in google docs: Steph's Honey Wheat Sourdough Bread 

Any thoughts about how I could get a more dense crumb?

I tried Maurizio's recipe for Whole Wheat Sourdough Sandwich bread, and it came out perfect...but still too sour for what I would like. 

Lechem's picture
Lechem (not verified)

Is to be careful not to knock the air out when performing the stretch and folds. It's also less common nowadays to completely knock the air out when shaping. Enough to shape but not fully. 

Perhaps you need to do the opposite. 

stephsoundoff's picture
stephsoundoff

Thank you, that's a good idea. Last night I made rolls from my recipe and now that I think about it, they didn't have large air bubbles in them. Perhaps it is because I handled them quite a lot when shaping them into rolls. I will try handling my dough more during shaping.

mutantspace's picture
mutantspace

another trick is to replace tablespoon for tablespoon yourt flour with cornstarch - it lowers the protein and i use it to create a substitute for 00 flour.basically when im making rolls that need a light airy close crumb i use plain flour and for every 500g swap out 8 tablespoons of flour for what we call corn flour but in America is called corn starch (i think). So that would be 500g all-purpose - 8 tablespoons + 8 tablespoons corn flour = cakier crumb... easier still would be to buy some lower protein flour....