Successfull 100% Wholewheat & 100% WholeSpelt boules.

First time i shaped a 100% wholewheat boule, this was the result:

and a dissapointing dense chewy crumb:

However, 10 days later of gulping this heavy non-delicable thing, i determined to have another round at boulies:

I recently purchased Peter Reinhart's Whole grain breads: New techniques, Extraordinary falvor. Scrolling through, i landed on Whole wheat hearth breads. I knew that Very high hydration in whole grains bring about better results but also slackier difficult-to-free form loaves. I sticked to measurments of Peter, and become hooked. I learned that measurments are crucial for starters. 

For the Boule, i improvised. I never found a banetton/brotform. I bought regular bamboo baskets and lined them with greased + floured wax paper and strapped the linning with a rubber band. IT WORKED!. Now i have a permanent proofing basket at no cost. Two doughs i made, One is whole wheat and the other Whole spelt. As instructed by PR, i made a biga and a SoAKER for both.

This is how it turned, any suggestions?

Whole Wheat crumb shot:

Whole Spelt Crumb shot:

Mebake

I don't know what the problem is this year, but every time we make a whole wheat bread with red wheat flour it doesn't rise well and we never get any oven rise at all.  It is so disappointing.  I never had that problem last year, but this year it never fails to disappoint.  I am using the same recipes as last year, but nothing works.  Our sourdough breads aren't bad this year, but I don't use any red whole wheat flour in them because I don't want them to come out as hard lumps of bread.  Any ideas.

Blessings,

Lydia

Here is the recipe

2 t. salt
2 1/4 c. water
1/3 c. honey
1 T. yeast
6 c. flour (equal parts, red whole wheat, white whole wheat and Kamut)

Somewhere on this site when I first started looking there was a photo of the most wonderful multi-grain bread.  I can't find it and I didn't think to save it at the time.

Can soakers be used in any recipe?  What is the procedure and what exactly do I buy in order to do it?

My every week bread is a standard one consisting of

3-1/2 c bread flour

1/2 c wheat flour

1-1/2 tsp salt

2 cups water

Mix together, sit for 18 hours, fold a little (I'm still working on that part) shape, let rise and bake in cast iron dutch oven, first with lid on and then lid off.  It's a great bread, but I'd like to add some whole grains to it.  I"m just not sure of the technique.

I do have 2 starters to choose from.  One 100% hydration and one about 70% if I need to go that route.

thanks for any and all help

-Susie

I have started using a predigestion for my WW loaves to compensate for phytic acid, but I seem to be having trouble getting a good rise out of my loaves.  My predigestions have been approx 12-14 hours with 3, 45 min rises after adding the additional ingredients.  Has anyone else had any problems with this? I am wondering if the 14 hours is great for dealing with phytic acid but perhaps breaks down the gluten too much for average sized WW loaves.  Thoughts?

First of all, I grind my own "hard red wheat" in a "Regal Kitchen Pro Grain Mill" which doesn't get as fine as I want but still works alright.
My mission is to get a nice whole grain loaf with lots of flavor which isn't too dry or dense, crumbly or gummy and is... well I want it to be perfect.

In a bread machine I've used combos of whole wheat plus rye, millet, masa harina, fava/garbanzo flour, oats, and rarely but with best results, all purpose. I also went through a bag of vital wheat gluten but didn't notice any difference I could attribute to it.

I'm trying something new, to me. I read the first part of "A Bread Baker's Apprentice" and am trying to make a loaf of whole wheat using an adaptation of Reinhart's methods (I didn't buy the book so can't follow it precisely and am way too inclined to experiment anyways).

I started with a soaker. I measured 2 1/2 cups of wheat and ground it. Then I combined the flour with 2 1/2 cups of bottled water (tap is awful here). Then I set it in the fridge, sealed up, overnight.
The next afternoon I ground 1 1/2 cups of wheat and stirred in 1/2 cup of very hot water. The mixture was super crumbly, not doughy at all. I let that sit about 30 minutes, covered, and then sprinkled on 1/2 tsp of instant yeast.
I oiled and floured my counter top with plenty of all purpose, turned out the soaker and kneaded it with the crumbly yeast mixture. After about 8-10 minutes of kneading the dough was still awfully wet and stuck to everything. I put it back in a covered bowl and stuck it in the fridge to use the next day. I know the flour to water ratio was way off here but I didn't want to add too much flour by accident. Still not sure how much flour is actually made by a measured volume of wheat.
When I checked the dough this morning it hadn't risen a bit. I took out the dough, turned it onto a floured counter and tried working more all-purpose into it. Still horribly sticky, worse. It felt lumpy and didn't want to smooth out and the fibers were tearing rather than being nice and stretchy. I didn't even attempt the windowpane test. SO here is where I stopped again and I am currently waiting for it to rise at room temperature.
Questions:
How much flour is made by a measured volume of wheat and how should i apply that information?
I'm sure I made a heap of problems for myself. Can you explain what they were or what I should do instead?
Should I have kneaded more? I have no idea how much kneading is required when it involves a soaker or similar. I didn't want to oxidize the flour either. Read that could affect flavor. Also I read a tiny bit of the "No-Knead Bread" book which seems to be all about soaking and refrigerating dough. How does that method compare to Reinhart's?
Can I fix my dough at this point or is it okay?
Aftee it rises (if it rises) at room temperature should I punch it down and let it rise again or just go ahead and bake it?
Thanks for your help!

I've been baking a lot of stuff out of PR's _Whole Grain Breads_. His 100% whole wheat sandwich bread is awesome. It calls for a soaker (made with ww and buttermilk and salt) and a biga (ww and water and yeast).

Through inattention (I blame Sportscenter), I tried a variant yesterday -- the soaker used water and the biga used buttermilk. I'm happy to report it came out just as good. :)

I would say it came out better -- I liked it better -- than the correct method, but I think that the fact that it used Agave nectar instead of honey had more to do with it. I may do some side-by-side tests.

We needed "quick" bread, so I tried Hamelman's 5-Grain, straight dough, with yeast.  Success! (Notes below...)

The soaker phase seemed dry, and I worried I had made a mistake, but when the whole dough came together it was quite sticky.  No mixer, so we (notice the "we", I called in some help) ended up kneading with wet hands to prevent the dough from sticking too much.  The formula calls for flax seed, for which I substituted flax meal.  I think this resulted in a more "crumbly" crumb than intended.  Next time I'll use flax seed, but the bread was nevertheless very good.  When I tried to weigh the yeast it was far too much, so I had to resort to measuring spoons for that.  (More finely calibrated scale on my wish list.)  I proofed on parchment, rather than in bannetons, but still got reasonable height.

Slightly sweet, which was surprising, and much softer than I expected.  The steaming method Jeffrey outlines on pages 26, 27 of Bread worked well.  (I did not use the terracotta bell in the photo.) The recipe is a big batch, two 25-ounce loaves and 16 2-ounce rolls.  This dough makes really good rolls.  (To digress, it turns out that making a pan of rolls served us well.  We had drop-in company and it was really nice to be able to just set out warm rolls, butter and jam, to share fresh baking, without feeling obliged to hack into a too-warm loaf.)

Next time I plan to try the Levain version of this bread, I hear it's even better, but for a straight dough with yeast, I was very pleased.

Terri (Glass-Weaver)

I've been trying to create a reliable recipe and improve my technique so that I can create a daily toast type bread that I can add grains and seeds to and perhaps a small amount of wholemeal or different type of flour (soy, besan etc)

I was happy with my results and improvements in the texture of my bread - as I've posted here in talking about a basic white bread with a good wholey spongy texture.

I have just made a couple of loaves with the same recipe but have added a mixture of linseed, black quinoa and sesame. The bread is beatuifully light and fluffy and wholey, but prehaps less spongy that before and the main dissappointment is that the bread is pretty fragile on the inside. and breaks apart a bit when buttered.

I'm guessing this may be due to the seeds breaking up the tension in the dough?? Or could it be something else.

Any suggestion on how to overcome this and create a nice strong crumb would be gladly received!

Hi all,

I'm really keen on knowing which ingredient is responsible for the very dark almost black color of some breads. When I make bread, regardless of the recipe at most it's grey. Sometimes a little darker, but never deeply brown/black.

I read that dark sugar might be used or roasted malt. Yet, I can't exactly pinpoint the cause of the deep dark color. So anyone any ideas on which ingredients might darken the bread?

Cheers

I was reading a post from..I think..Tessa?  Where she was desribing a problem with her WW dough tearing.  This post was a couple of weeks ago.  I have had the very same problem!  I started making bread again in the last few months, after taking a few years off.  I don't remember having this problem before, but it was a long time ago, so I may not remember quite right.  I posted a question a couple of weeks ago, desribing my bread as "lumpy" on top.  It's hard to explain, it just doesn't come out looking beautiful.  After reading Tessa's desription of the dough tearing, I realized that I should have mentioned that.  One answer was to limit the oil I was using--it didn't make any difference.  I have adjusted everything I know of, exept the kneading time.  I use a Bosch Universal Mixer on #2 for 8 to 10 minutes (depending on if I make 2 or 3 loaves).  One poster commented that she (or he) kneaded for "as long as it took", sometimes as long as 30 minutes.  I am wondering if this person was kneading by hand or using a machine?  Does it sound like my problem could be solved by more or longer kneading?  I should mention that  I am using hard red and hard white (50/50) and I have quite a bit of it, so I have to make the best of it.