Has anyone made this recipe? I'm making it right now and it's the nicest dough I've ever worked with. However, I'm not sure if it's the Phoenix dry air or the recipe but I had to add an extra 1 cup of water, despite using 1/2 cup milk instead of the dry milk and only the minimum 3 cups flour. Using the Whole Wheat white which I've never worked with and absolutely love.

I used Meyer lemon juice instead of orange juice and the tangy distinct meyer smell is so incredible it's filling up the camper as it rises. I used the healthier option of 5 tbsps olive oil instead of butter. I have high hopes for this bread. I stretched it in the bowl after mixing and I'm planning on doing this 3 times. I'm going to bake in a loaf pan as I hardly ever make a loaf in the loaf pan. Besides, just bought a loaf pan to fit in my "mini" RV oven.

Wish me luck!! Just tossed my nasty, bitter burned grilled baguettes tonight and had to redeem myself. My flour had gone bad and then I burned it. I tossed the other 4 blobs because the flour tasted so bad it wasn't even worth practiceing with.

Tracy

I liked the Buttermilk-Whole-Wheat-Bread which I baked just a couple days ago so much that I decided to continue with 100% whole wheat. The Buttermilk-Whole-Wheat-Bread was very soft and light, I have never seen a whole-wheat bread like this.

I adapted the recipe I used the last time. It was, for my taste, somewhat to sweet and it lacked a real crust. And I decided to substitute the buttermilk by a yoghurt-water-blend, because that's what I always got on hand here. (Whereas plain buttermilk is often hard to get.) And I increased the hydration by a lot. And I used this time a preferment, with sourdough - In order to get a deeper, less sweet flavor.

A lot of changes, you see. I wasn't to worried that anything could go wrong, because I think the reason why this bread came out so light is, first of all, proper kneading, and secondly, some acidic dairy products.

Yoghurt-Whole-Wheat-Bread

Preferment:
20 g mature culture
175 ml water
250 g whole-wheat flour (I always use home-ground flour)

Final dough
580 g whole-wheat flour
25 g vital wheat gluten
17 g salt
1 teaspoon dry yeast
20 g honey
30 g butter
150 g yoghurt (I used 3% fat yoghurt)
320 + 100 ml water

1. I mixed the ingredients of the preferment and kept it over night in a warm place (I put it into the microwave, with the door a little bit open - this way, the light stays on and I get a temperature of ~81° F)
2. The next morning, I let the remaining flour autolyse for an hour. (I mixed the flour with the gluten first, then with all of the yoghurt and 320 ml water.)
3. Then I mixed the preferment and the flour-water-dough with the remaining ingredients (not the last 100 ml water though) and I kneaded it by hand using the Bertinet method for 15 minutes. While kneading, I incorporated another 100 ml of water. The gluten was perfectly developed, even better than the last time.
4. first fermentation: until doubled, it took me about two hours. Then I degassed the dough very well and shaped it into a boule again.
5. second fermentation: until doubled, it took me about 1.5 hours.
6. I divided the dough into two pieces, preshaped them and let them rest for a couple minutes. then shaped them into sandwich loaves, rolled them in rice flour (I use whatever I've got on hand . . . coarse wheat, bran, oats . . .) and put them into bread pans.
7. final fermentation: until the loaves reached well over the edges of the pans, about one hour.
8. I slashed the loaves and put them in the 220° C hot oven and steamed well. After 20 minutes of baking, I took them out of the pans and baked them until done on a baking sheet. (another 20 minutes.) I covered the loaves with aluminium foil for the last ten minutes.

I think the bread had about as much volume as the last time, I'm very pleased with that. It has quite a sour flavor. It's definitely a good flavor, but for my taste it's somewhat to sour for being a sandwich bread. I will change something about that. The bread did well with the higher heat and I think that I'll bake this kind of recipe in these settings in the future. It still didn't have a crunchy crust, but that's not what I'm looking for in a sandwich bread either. I will reduce the amount of water somewhat, because it simply was harder to shape with a hydration of 86 % and the result wasn't significantly better. Maybe something around 75-80% the next time? I'm happy with the reduction of sugar though!

I think, the next time I'll bake this bread with a yeast preferment and simply add a little of sourdough to the final dough. Or should I include some whole rye for a deeper flavour? I'd like to experiment with some further additions to the dough, like soaked wheat chops or some seeds (incorporated in the dough when the gluten is developed). I'll do some more experiments, I promise!

Salome

Since I bake all of our bread, I'm always on the hunt for great sandwich loaf recipes to try. I get bored making the same ones week after week.

I tried this one today and I'll definitely be adding it to the rotation: Oatmeal & Brown Sugar Toasting Bread from King Arthur Flour.

It has rolled oats, steel-cut oats and a nice dose of brown sugar for a sweet, toasty, nutty loaf. I bumped up the nutrition a bit by adding some whole-wheat flour to the mix.

You can see photos and get the recipe on my blog, Flour Girl, or on the King Arthur Flour site.

Happy baking!

Flour Girl

This morning I departed from my newbie efforts at French loaves at the request of my dear husband, who enjoys same but requested "useful" bread for sandwiches.  As we are currently buying a loaf or more a day, I conceded it would be useful and a good experience to learn to make a basic white sandwich bread.  So....a look at one of my favourite recipe books produced a recipe for "basic white bread".  It's maybe important to say that this recipe book is written by daughters of Alberta, Canada home-steaders, and so includes a lot of "down-home" basic food.  It's been a fantastic and extremely reliable cookbook.  The bread ingredients are not measured by weight, but as I live in Alberta myself, I would have expected their measurements & directions to be fairly reliable for this elevation. 

This is the recipe, to give you an idea what I'm working with.  I did follow the directions exactly, even though they are quite different from what I've been doing.

2 tsp sugar

1 cup lukewarm water

2 tbsp active dry yeast

2 cups milk, scalded

6 tbsp sugar

4 tsp salt

1 cup cold water

4 tbsp butter

11 cups flour, approx (I only used 10 total)

Dissolve 2 tsp sugar in lukewarm water, sprinkle yeast on top and let stand 10 min. Scald milk and add 6 tbsp sugar & salt. When dissolved, add 1 cup cold water to bring mixture to lukewarm.  Add butter.  Measure 10 cups flour, make well in centre.  Mix liquid ingredients together and pour into well.

What a mess!  Busy mums don't need this waste of time!  The bread dough was extremely dry, to the point where it just wouldn't seem to come together at all, so I added an additional cup or so of room-temperature water -- maybe more.  This eventually brought the dough to a good consistency, but I can't seem to work it properly.  I'm doing it by hand and my limited previous experience with this has went well.  This time, the dough doesn't seem to want to re-connect with itself on a knead or fold.  This is a gluten problem, right?  Is it just something with this type of dough, maybe (i.e. different gluten development than with a French loaf)?  I tried folding it, letting it rest for a few minutes and then coming back to it a couple of times.  Definitely looks better and is smoother each time, but still won't fold in on itself properly.  It's as if it's too dry to do this, but i sure wouldn't have thought so given the consistency. Thoughts?

Karen

I baked this one today (started it yesterday) and I am impressed. I had never tasted a sandwich loaf so good! I have made rustic breads before but not sandwich loaves because I don't normally eat that type of bread so my husband just buys his from the supermarket (Pepperridge Farm type). I think from now on, there will be no eating supermarket plastic bread in this house! So good!

June

Why is my sandwich loaf splitting?: I followed the one stage sourdough recipe I found on this site.  I used freshly ground whole wheat only.  I also followed JMonkey's shaping video. Well I probably made some errors since I don't know yet why and how the loaf is optimized. SO what happened? Why did it split so much?

Also why could i only slice it quite thick?  Could it have been too freshly out of the oven? 

Here is a picture of the slice;

loaf slices