Frequently when I ask my friends if they would like some bread, they say something like, oh I can't eat that - I'm off bread. This makes me sad, so I decided to change my tack. So lately I've been asking would you like some 100% whole wheat sandwich bread, and the responses have been much more positive. Only one problem - I really don't know how to bake with 100% whole wheat. So I finally took Janetcook's advice and got Whole Grain Breads by Peter Reinhart.
Here is a shot at his master formula - enriched whole wheat loaf. This tastes pretty darn good for 100% whole wheat. Most of the flour is either in an overnight soaker or an overnight biga, so it comes out pretty soft. The enrichment produces a smooth soft crumb. And much more edible than my attempts at unenriched 100% whole wheats thus far.
I used the approach of really knocking the dough around in the mixer to get adequate dough development. Since I have a Bosch Compact and Franko warned me that despite the advertised 5 lb capacity, one is better off mixing under 1Kg or less than half that, I mixed up the 1.4Kg dough by hand, blended the ingredients for a few minutes in the compact, then cut the dough in half and did development half at a time for around 15 minutes each on speed 2. I was able to get a semi-fragile window pane - in other words I could get it quite thin, but it was a hair away from breaking. Based on the results I think I should probably have gone a bit longer.
The resulting bread is great for the calorie conscious consumer (say that 5 times) as it can be cut quite thin.
I suspect a lot of people on TFL make this loaf, so would be interested in any insights, observations, and so forth.
The best thing about it though was I pulled off one of the three pieces and handed it to a friend who was happy to have it. We'll see how she feels after she and her family get to it.