50% whole-wheat

In reference to the comment of TFL member : subfuscpersona, here, where SF thankfully shared his idea of Freezing a yeasted BIGA for future use; i have finally done the proposed method, with little deviations of my own.

The recipe was adapted from Peter Reinhart's (Transitional Multigrain Hearth bread).

Ingredients:

Soaker:       223g    Bran + coarse whole Wheat middlings

          (sifted remains of milled Wholewheat flour)

                   4g (1/2 tsp)    Salt

                   173g              water

-----------------------------------------

Total:          400 grams

Biga:      227g               Bread flour                                      50 % wholewheat

                  1g (1/4tsp)      Instant Dry Yeast                    50% Prefermented Flour

                   142g                     water                                             Total Hydration: 70%

------------------------------------------                                        Bulk Fermentation: 45 min.

Total:        370 grams                                                             Final Fermentation: 30-45 min @ 25c

Final Dough:

                 400g                     All Soaker

                 370g                     All Biga

                 9g  (2 ¼ tsp)          Instant Dry Yeast    

                8g  (1 tsp)              Salt

------------------------------------------

Total:       787 grams

Deviations where in mixing the White Biga , fermenting it at room temperature for 4 Hours until it doubled, then immediately freezing it. biga was frozen for three days, and thawed slowly in the refrigerator for another 24 hrs prior to baking day. Amusing, how convenient these Yeasted Bigas are!

Yesterday, 2 hours before mixing, i removed the thawed Biga from the refrigerator to allow it to come to room temperature. Mixing proceeded, and i did not notice any adverse effects of the freezing on the structure of the Biga. Mind you, it was a White Biga, I'am sure the same would apply for a wholewheat biga, too.

The Final dough developed very quickly, and was bulkfermented, preshped, shaped, and fermented in a banneton. I wanted to try Franko's recent scoring style: here, Nice!

Thanks to Subfuscpersona, for his Ideas...! my Freezer shall be packed with Bigas from now on... :)

khalid

In the last 2 weeks, I baked a lot of breads. I hope I'll have time to write about every one of them, and I start with these two loafs.

The first one was 50% whole-wheat with roasted wheat germ using a liquid levain. The hydration is 75%, and prefermented flour is 20% of the total amount of flour. I kneaded only by hand, with folds in the bowl, then I transfered the dough in a lightly oiled container and I did 2 S-F at 50 minutes interval for 2h:30 min fermentation time. Shape a batard and refrigerated for 21 hours (I didn't intended to ferment the dough so long, but I had a busy day). I loved the aroma of this bread, tangy with a nutty flavor. My boyfriend took a half of it on a mountain trip and it held very well, in sunny and rainy weather. I ate the other half toasted, and this increased the nutty flavor. It was a simple formula, with a good result.

The other loaf, made two days later, was 50% rye with roasted fennel seeds, using a liquid levain. The hydration was 80%, prefermented flour 20%. I thought I could refrigerate the dough overnight, but I checked the dough after 4 hours in the fridge and it was proofed, so I had to bake it in the middle of the night (bad planning, sleepy eyes, ugly scoring). The aroma of rye and fennel filled the room. The bread was light (the huge amount of water evaporated during baking?), and I was surprised to see the open crumb, given the fact that was so much rye and the dough was at the limit of overproofing. I loved eating this bread, especially with goat cheese and olive oil.

Here is a picture with a comparative section of this two breads.

Complete recipes and more pictures can be found on my romanian blog,  Water.Flour.Salt., first one, here, and second one, here.

Codruta