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.

Maybe bread that is made solely with bleached
white flour, yeast, salt, sugar, and oil, does not have much nutrition in it,

I baked a Babka using half unbleached flour & half whole wheat flour & finished product tastes terrible having a sour taste to it.  I've baked Babka for many years, using only unbleached flour with great success, but I'm not sure - is wheat flour supposed to have a sour taste to it?

Also baked a batch of cinnamon rolls - my first attempt - well half way through the baking, the filling started to smoke.  I turned the temp down immediately, but don't understand why that happened.  The end product turned out beautiful, waiting for them to cool down so we can check the taste.  I followed a recipe that is supposed to be the original Cinnabon recipe.

Would appreciate any feedback.  Thank you all.  Love this site!

For those who may be interested, I've detailed a recipe for a 100% white whole wheat sandwich bread here:

http://www.breadcetera.com/?p=177

SteveB

Hi. Does anyone have a good recipe they tried out for making 100% whole wheat bread in a breadmaker? I dont want to use gluten nor any white flours. The yeast I have availabe is instant packet yeast. I dont mind using honey, sugar etc.  Thanks

I recently found a recipe by JMonkey for Whole Wheat Buttermilk bread that he posted on July 10, 2006.  A search of TFL will quickly locate the original post for you, and I would recommend that you read it.  The bread he made was based on one of  the recipes from Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book, but JMonkey did a comparison of baking it "straight" and baking with a biga.  His success with the biga version inspired me to try it myself.  I have had very little success with whole grain baking in the past.  Most of my breads were much too heavy, and often had a slightly bitter taste.

JMonkey's recipe was:

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Biga
5 ¼ ounces -- 150 grams -- 1 cup water
250 grams -- 8 3/4 ounces -- 1 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/8 tsp instant yeast

Final dough
All of the biga
1 ½ tsp instant yeast
4 3/4 ounces -- 135 grams-- 3/4 cup warm water
¼ cup honey
1 ¼ cup cold buttermilk
580 grams / 20.5 ounces -- 4 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
2 tsp salt
2 Tbs butter

The night before, make up the biga. Knead it until it forms a relatively smooth dough, and then cover it to sit overnight for about 12-14 hours.

The next day, tear the biga into about 12 pieces and mix it up with the rest of the ingredients. Start kneading -- it'll take about 600 strokes and 20 minutes, but once you're finished, the dough should stretch nicely into a translucent, whitish pane, flecked with bits of bran. This dough may start a bit sticky, but should lose the stickiness and become simply tacky about halfway through. Add water or flour as necessary.

Form the dough into a ball and put it into bowl or bucket. Cover it, and allow the dough to rise for about 90 minutes or so. Poke the dough with a wet finger. When the indention starts to fill in very, very slowly, the dough is risen.

Gently degas the dough, and tuck it back into a tight ball for the second rise. Fold the dough if you wish, but really, after 600 strokes, the dough shouldn't need any additional strength. Once it has risen, divide the dough into two and shape it into sandwich loaves. Place the loaves into pre-greased 8.5 x 4.5 pans. Cover the pans with plastic for the final rise.

Preheat the oven to 350 degree F. (I like my oven a little hotter than Laurel does -- she prefers 325). Once the dough is risen and has crested one to two inches above the side of the pan in the center, slash the loaves as you wish with a serrated knife or razor blade. Personally, I prefer a single slash down the middle, but do whatever makes you happy. Place them in the oven and steam it if you wish (I find it helps with oven spring quite a bit, even with panned loaves), and bake for about 35-40 minutes, turning once to ensure even baking.

The loaves are done when they register 195-200 in the center. Let them cool for one hour before slicing.

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I modified the recipe by:

• Using unsulfured molasses instead of honey (I was out of honey)
• Kneading was done with my Kitchen Aid stand mixer until the dough was very elastic and had a good "window pane"
• Doing a stretch-and-fold at 45 and 90 minutes, followed by another 1 1/2 hour rise.  The second rise was huge.

The resulting loaves weren't quite as high as JMonkeys, but the crust was beautiful, the crumb light and moist, and the flavor was absolutely wonderful.  There was no bitter taste, and the molasses made a wonderful substitute for the honey.  It also added to the aroma of the bread.  Although the proofed bread had raised to about two inches above the level of the loaf pans, the final loaf actually fell very slightly.  There was great initial oven spring (a water pan was used in the oven and the loaf pans were set on a preheated stone), so I was a little surprised with the fall.  The bread, however, did not seem to suffer in any way.  The crumb doesn't show unusual areas of density that I have seen in other breads that have fallen during baking.  The photo of the crumb below doesn't quite do it justice as I sliced the bread while it was still a bit warm (I couldn't wait any longer!). Any suggestions concerning the fall are more than welcome.

All in all, this is a delightfully light and flavorful whole wheat bread that will be baked at our house on a regular basis. It makes a wonderful sandwich and toasting bread.

I've been trying to make Reinhart's 100% whole wheat sandwich bread. This is the first bread I've tried to bake outside a bread machine, so I don't have a good handle on what I should expect at each stage --- and whether Reinhart's dough should feel different than normal bread doughs. So I was hoping some of you could help me troubleshoot. :) Any suggestions or ideas would be much appreciated.

I've been getting a very dense and gummy loaf. It's 3.25" tall, so it just barely sticks out above the loaf pan.... the book says it's supposed to rise 1.5" above the pan. That said, it does have a sweet and complex flavor.

I've been trying to follow Reinhart as closely as I can. I measured by weight and used King Arthur White Wheat Flour; I had to substitute soy milk for milk. I mixed in the stand mixer where he says I can, and then I did some hand kneading as he indicates.

So I have a few ideas about what could have went wrong, please let me know which of these sound most plausible.

1. Not enough baking time. At 350 degrees, I baked for 20 minutes, rotated, and baked another 20 minutes. I don't have a thermometer.
    
2. Not enough proofing time. Reinhart says it's supposed to rise 1.5" above the pan. I think I got impatient after 50 minutes and just put it in the oven.
    
3. Not enough rising time. Reinhart says to wait for it to double in size.... but I'm not sure what that means in a glass bowl. Double in height? Double in diameter? Double in volume?
    
4. Not enough gluten development => not enough kneading? My dough always seemed very wet and sticky. I added flour to try and compensate, but I was watching some videos at Sourdough Home, and they say the dough should start out wet and sticky, but kneading should make it more smooth and subtle. Maybe I just didn't knead it enough? I also noticed that dough seems to look normal at first, but then after a few minutes in the stand mixer with the dough hook, it seems to get "wetter", if that makes any sense...
    

Or maybe it's some other problem entirely??  Anyway, any suggestions or ideas would be most welcome. I was thinking about maybe trying to bake some simpler breads first so that I have a better idea of what to expect.

Thank you,
Daniel