The Fresh Loaf

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wheat germ

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

Happy Rosh Hashanah to all  -  A New Year Knotted Roll for dinner made here:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/29577/50-rye-sd-knotted-rolls-wheat-germ-caraway-and-sunflower-seeds

but eaten tonight.  It is a 50% Rye SD Knotted Rolls With Wheat Germ, Barley Scald, Caraway and Sunflower Seeds and was just as good as the day they were made.    They are all gone now but we will make some more sometime in the New Year.  The best to you and yours.

Forgot the New Year's sunset.

Isand66's picture
Isand66

After reading about how much better freshly ground flour is compared to store-bought I finally decided to wiggle a couple of toes in the water and try grinding some of my own.  I used my Krupps coffee grinder to make some Farro flour and also some Hard Red Wheat from grains I had purchased at Whole Foods previously.

To make it interesting I used a portion of my standard AP starter along with a much larger portion of a Farro starter I prepared.

I didn't have enough whole grains to grind all my own flour so I used King Arthur flour for the rest of the ingredients.

I also made a soaker using some cracked wheat.

I have to say I made a mistake by thinking the extra liquid from the soaker would increase the hydration of the dough which only comes in at 57%.  Since the freshly milled flour also sucks up more water than store-bought the final dough ended up much drier than I would have liked and the crumb was denser than my usual multi-grain bakes.  Next time I will increase the liquid amount probably another 15-20%.

I think I shall have to invest in an attachment for my wife's Kitchen Aid to mill my own flour which should be much easier to do larger batches than the Krupps.

In any case the final bread while not being one of my favorites still tasted very earthy with a nice sour flavor and nutty undertones from the Farro and Wheat Germ.

Farro Starter

184 grams Farro Flour ground from fresh kernels

71 grams AP Starter

117 grams Water at Room Temperature (80-90 degrees F.)

Mix ingredients in a bowl until thoroughly combined.  Cover the bowl and let it sit at room temperature for around 10 hours.  The starter should almost double when ready to proceed.  You can either mix in final dough or put in refrigerator for at most 1 day before using.  If your kitchen is warmer than mine which is usually about 70-72 degrees with my air-conditioning you can proceed sooner.

Soaker

90 grams Cracked Wheat

280 grams Boiling Water

Mix ingredients together in a bowl and cover.  Let rest for 30 minutes or longer until ready to use.

Drain the liquid before mixing in the final dough.

Main Dough Ingredients

75 grams Refreshed AP Starter (65% hydration)

351 grams Farro Starter from above (should be all of it)

90 grams Cracked Wheat Soaker from above

75 grams Quinoa Flour

70 grams Wheat Germ

40 grams Potato Flour

200 grams French Style Flour (You can substitute AP flour)

195 grams Freshly Ground Hard Red Wheat Flour

100 grams Pumpernickel Flour (Dark Rye or Course Rye Flour)

50 grams Molasses

16 grams Sea Salt or Table Salt

430 grams Hard Cider

Procedure

Mix the flours with the Hard Cider and molasses in your mixer or by hand for 1 minute.  Next cut the starters into small pieces and put in bowl and mix for 1 minute to incorporate all the ingredients.  Let the dough autolyse for 20 minutes to an hour in your bowl and make sure to cover it.  Next add in the salt, and the soaker and mix on speed #1 for 3 minutes or by hand and on speed #2 for 2 minutes.  The dough should have come together in a ball and be tacky but not too sticky.

Next take the dough out of the bowl and place it on your work surface.  Do a stretch and fold and rest the dough uncovered for 10 minutes.  After the rest do another stretch and fold and cover the dough and let it rest for 10 minutes.  Do one more stretch and fold and put the dough into a lightly oiled bowl and let it sit at room temperature covered for 2 hours.  After 2 hours you can put the dough into the refrigerator for 24 hours or up to 2 days before baking.  Feel free to do some additional S & F's if you feel it is necessary.  I baked the bread about 24 hours later.

The next day (or when ready to bake) let the dough sit out at room temperature for 1.5 - 2  hours.  Next, form the dough into your desired shape and put them in floured bannetons, bowls or on a baking sheet and let them rise covered for 2 hours or until they pass the poke test.  Score the loaves as desired and prepare your oven for baking with steam.

Set your oven for 500 degrees F. at least 30 minutes before ready to bake.  When ready to bake place the loaves into your on  your oven stone with steam and lower the temperature immediately to 450 degrees.  Since these loaves were a little lower in hydration and were not cooking as quickly as normal, I lowered the temperature to 430 degrees.  The total baking time was around 45 minutes.  When both loaves are golden brown and reached an internal temperature of 200 degrees F. you can remove them from the oven.

Let the loaves cool down for at least an 6 hours or so before eating as desired.

The crust the next day was very hard and the crumb like I said before was much denser than I would have hoped but this bread still makes some nice pastrami or corned beef sandwiches for sure along with a nice sour pickle.  Now I have to go get some to eat for lunch!

Symmetry's picture

Wheat germ: is it glutinous?

August 1, 2012 - 11:25am -- Symmetry
Forums: 

I love to use wheat germ when I'm cooking, but I haven't added it to any breads yet. Does anybody know how it reacts when added to bread dough (other than adding that wonderful flavor, that is)? Does it retard or accelerate the gluten development? Does it, in fact, have any effect at all?

Also, please share any breads you particularly like wheat germ in! It's super-healthy, and I love the taste of it.

Isand66's picture
Isand66

I have about 100 recipes and counting I want to try from old cookbooks as well as new cookbooks, not to mention all the recipes I have saved from various blog posts and websites.  Having said that I decided to experiment on my own instead and came up with a variation of Peter Reinhart's San Francisco sourdough using durum flour, stone ground barley flour and some roasted wheat germ as well.  I was very happy with the results with the exception that I didn't do a great job of shaping the loaves and they became slightly misshapen.  I do have to say though that the malformed shapes fortunately did not affect the taste.  The crumb was a little tighter than I would have preferred, but overall the bread had a nice nutty sweet flavor and went well with my wife's bow-tie pasta and chicken in a cream sauce she made tonight for dinner.

If anybody decides to try this for themselves, I would love to hear about your results.

Ingredients

15 ounces 65% Hydration Starter Refreshed

2.5 ounces Stone Ground Barley Flour (I use King Arthur Flour)

10 ounces European Style Flour from KAF (or Bread Flour)

5 ounces Extra Fancy Durum Semolina Flour (King Arthur Flour)

2.5 ounces Roasted Wheat Germ

14 ounces Luke warm water, 90 - 95 degrees Fahrenheit

2 1/2 Teaspoons Sea Salt

2 1/4 Teaspoons Instant Yeast  (you can omit the yeast if desired and let the dough sit for 1 1/2 hours to 2 hours before refrigerating)

Directions

Using your stand mixer or by hand, mix the water with the starter to break up the starter.

Add the flours, salt, yeast (if using), and mix on the lowest speed for 2 minutes.  Let rest for 5 minutes.

Mix for 4 minutes more on medium speed, adding more flour if necessary to produce a slightly sticky ball of dough.

Remove dough to your lightly floured work surface and need for 1 minute and form into a ball.

Leave uncovered for 10 minutes.

Do a stretch and fold and form into a ball again and cover with a clean moist cloth or oiled plastic wrap.

After another 10 minutes do another stretch and fold and put into a lightly oiled bowl that has enough room so the dough can double overnight.

Put in your refrigerator immediately for at least 12 hours or up to 3 days.

When ready to bake the bread, shape the dough as desired being careful not to handle the dough too roughly so you don't de-gas it. (If you did not use yeast, let it sit in your bowl for 2 hours before shaping).

Place it in your bowl, banneton or shape into baguettes.

Let it sit at room temperature for 2 hours covered with oiled plastic wrap or a wet cloth.

Pre-heat oven with baking stone (I use one on bottom and one on top shelf of my oven), to 500 degrees F.

Slash loaves as desired and place empty pan in bottom shelf of oven.

Pour 1 cup of very hot water into pan and place loaves into oven.

Lower oven to 450 Degrees and bake for 25 - 35 minutes until bread is golden brown and internal temperature reaches 200 degrees.

Let cool on cooling rack and enjoy!

This post has been submitted to the Yeast Spotting Site here: http://www.wildyeastblog.com/category/yeastspotting

Please feel free to visit my other Blog for older posts at: http://www.mookielovesbread.wordpress.com

MadAboutB8's picture
MadAboutB8

 Inspired by Dmsnyder's SFBI Miche, I made another wheat germ sourdough weeks ago and loved it. This time, I wanted to increase hydration and include rye flour in the dough.  Instead of calling them wheat germ sourdough, I’d like to call it Pain au Levain with wheat germs (pain au levain is literally sourdough bread, only with fancier name). Taking the idea from Susan at Wild Yeast Blog, I shaped the dough into 3 Bs, three basic shapes; boule (round), batard (oval) and baguette. The bread had 2% toasted wheat germs, 72% hydration (amount of water comparing to total flour), mixture of bread flour (80%), whole wheat (15%) and rye flour (5%). I used the mixed flour sourdough starter (whole wheat & bread flour at 50/50 ratio) as I wanted pronounced acidity for the bread.  The bread didn’t disappoint. It was good all-round bread. It was great for toast, soup and sandwiches. I made Croque Madame using the bread and it was delicious. This recipe has now become my go-to plain sourdough bread.  It was also interesting to see the differences of the same dough into three shapes. Of all three shapes, I like the baguette shape the least. Baguette has high crust to crumb ratio and I am a crumb lover rather than crust. We froze the batard and haven’t got the chance to have it yet but I’m sure it will be as wonderful as the boule.  Full post and recipe is here.  Sue http://youcandoitathome.blogspot.com

Librarian's picture
Librarian

 

 

I came across this recipe in paper and thought it was worth a try, all the ingredients make this one a pocket full of flavour, which I am sure you will enjoy.

I try my best to explain where and why I deviated from the original recipe with bold and italic letters...

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Time to bake: ~ 1h15

Fermentation time: 18 hours sponge ( original )  // 13-14h my way

20 min , another 40 min ( original )   // 30 min autolyse / 1h / 1h

for the final dough.

Makes 2 loaves

 

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Ingredients:

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500g bread flour

250g semolina

150ml(g) milk lukewarm

150ml(g) water lukewarm x2 = 300 ml

60g butter

50g Wheat germs  

20g Malt               // I used 30g barley malt syrup

10g live yeast = 3.3g dry yeast = 1.1 instant active dry yeast ( If I am correct, please recheck to be sure , i only use live yeast )

some olive oil

 

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The sponge:

Combine 250g bread flour, 5g of the yeast an 150ml of water to a smooth, pliable dough The recipe didnt specify, I mixed 10 min with my Kitchen Aid on setting 3. I knew in advance that 18h  just would not work for me, so I added a teaspoon of sugar to accelerate the process a tiny bit and got away with around 14h. This is a rather small ammount of yeast, the time letting the sponge rest so long is well invested. It should double. I left it in a sealed plastic dough container at room temperature.

 

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The dough:
Mix the sponge with the rest of the bread flour, the semolina the wheat germ, the malt, the rest of the yeast with the milk and melted butter and salt. I melted the butter and added cold milk from the fridge which made the whole thing lukewarm. The recipe states to mix all the ingredients stated above and THEN add another 150ml of water after that, I thought that was rather silly, it is always harder to incorporate liquid into a dough later on than the other way around so I added the warm water with the milk and butter right away.

 

Knead the dough 10-12 minutes forceful with your hands on a counter well dusted with flour. This is a VERY sticky dough.

 

The original recipe states to oil up the dough and then let rest for only 20 min at a higher temperature in the oven. Being I worked with semolina before I knew it would take more time to absorb the water so I decided to let the dough autolyse for 30 min. Furthermore it makes it easier to shape the bread and gives more structure.

 

Much better after 30 min and still slightly sticky, but thats ok. knead again for 2,3 minutes. Instead of 20 min at higher temperature I decided to put oil on the surface as stated, but let the dough rest at room temperature for an hour

Divide the dough in 2 and roll it up on the counter, I am sure you can do better than I did.

Roll over the short edge into loafs:

Let the end be on top like in the picture this way you have the flour on the upside later on. The original states 20 min proofing time. I gave it another hour, covered with a moist towel

The bread will rise a decent ammount, at this point I thought I should maybe have rolled it up much flatter...maybe next time.

Baking:

Bake for 10 minutes at 250Celsius/485 Fahrenheit thend turn down to 190/375. Depending on your oven you might want to keep it open for a few seconds,

250 is rather hot and the bread turned dark very quickly.

I cheated with the flour afterwards abit. I didnt have enough down on the counter when rolling up, I always find it hard to make make rolled up bread like that stick together if you use to much flour, I forgot to add on top before putting it into the oven :(

Here the crust/crumb shot while still cooling off:

 

Resume:

I will definilty be making this again, the long fermentation adds suprising taste for "just" a yeast bread. The wheat germ adds a slightly nutty taste along with the texture of the semolina this is a very good bread. When I had a taste while it still was a bit warm it almost tasted a bit like a panini. I have seen much more ammount of enrichments in other breads, with quite less taste. I do hope, that if you try this you will enjoy every bite of it.

Submitted to YeastSpotting

 

 

MadAboutB8's picture
MadAboutB8

 

I was amazed how wheat germs enhanced bread flavor when I made David (dmsnyder)'s famous SFBI miche a couple of months ago. I liked it a lot that I wanted to try making more breads with wheat germs.

Well, I can be easily distracted with other baking projects, bread ideas, new books, etc. Now, two months later, I finally got the chance to make a plain sourdough with toasted wheat germs added. 

This time, I toasted the wheat germs longer until it was very aromatic and golden, which I believe it added nuttier flavor to the bread.

 before and after the toast (wheat germ)

I made a simple sourdough with mixed wheat and whole wheat starter that was fed twice before the final built. The formula has 68% hydration, 10% whole wheat flour and 2% toasted wheat germs.

I had been more vigilant with the 'desired dough temperature (DDT)' for the past few weeks as the weather was getting cooler in Melbourne, the temperature is now sitting around 10-14 C in the early morning and evening (when I prepare my starter and/or final mixing). I started to notice that the dough was rather slack without adhering to DDT (as a result of me being slack on the DDT). So, I am now back to the business measuring the temperature of ingredients and adjusting the water temperature to achieve DDT.

I am quite happy with the flavor of this bread. It was a simple sourdough with a small amount of wheat germ that did such a wonder to the flavor. I also love the flavor that mixed flour starter produced, pronounced acidic tone. The bread had a lovely chewy texture.

 

Full post and recipe is here

Sue

http://youcandoitathome.blogspot.com

bartwin's picture
bartwin

I would like to put back some bran and wheat germ into my white flour bread recipes.  Does anyone know what that translates to in terms of additional water per cup of flour?

oceanicthai's picture
oceanicthai

Today's bake was another 3 day sourdough with whole wheat and wheat germ.  The crumb wasn't as open as I'd like, but the crust was as lovely as usual with my Thai-style La Cloche, a terra cotta pot with lid.  I soak the lid before I heat up the pot and it steams the bread lovely.  The wheat germ soaked up a LOT of water and if I make this recipe again I will add more water.  It is delicious, interestingly, this time the sourdough is quite pronounced.  I was kind of nervous to do the refrigerated bulk ferment/retardation with the wheat germ because I had read about so much enzyme activity with the wheat germ, but it seemed okay, no grey mush.  I love the inspiration for this bread, San Francisco sourbread, I grew up in S.F. and the Bay Area until my teen years, which were spent in the Sierra Foothills.  For my next breads I'd like to start trying seeds on my dough.  I wonder if I should steam my dough less when I use the seeds?  I love TFL because whatever obscure piece of information I'm looking for is here, and so much more than I ever imagined I'd want to know!

ehanner's picture
ehanner

With all of the attention on the Miche breads of various members, I was motivated to try the one dmsnyder posted on. I was taken by the flavor comments and the use of toasted wheat germ. I took a stab at replicating the high extraction flour David used by combining 25% whole wheat flour with 75% Better For Bread (my stock AP). I use the fresh ground WW from Organic Wheat Products (flourgirl51) which is stone ground. She offers it ground fine but I have been using the more course ground product which you can see in the bread. David's photos seem to indicate a finer grind which would make the dough less speckled. Perhaps I'll run some of my WW through the mill to take it down a step in particle size. I think this would be a great excuse to order some Golden Buffalo high extraction flour.

I also took Davids suggestion with oven temperature and pre heated at 500F then lowered to 440F after loading and steaming. The vents were blocked for the first 20 minutes then opened for another 45 minutes. As you see, the crust is quite boldly baked. The areas of expansion are a lovely golden color. The singing is quite pronounced as would be expected with such a well colored loaf.

I think the next time I make this bread, I'll scale it up to 2kilo's as David suggested and shape it more oval. My dough weighed 1240 grams before baking and just 1002 grams after cooling for 30 minutes. The internal temperature was 205F when I pulled it from the stone. Normally I would dry out the crust by opening the door slightly after the oven had been shut down. In this case I thought the 65 minute bake was ample time in the oven to harden the crust.

I'm waiting for later in the day to slice this bread with dinner. Hopefully it will pare well with chicken piccata as bruchetta. I'll try to post a crumb shot later.

ADDED CRUMB SHOT AND COMMENTS:

First I have to say this bread has taken me to a place I have not been before. Such simple ingredients are blended with time and careful handling to create a most wonderful eating experience. This is one of those times where the sum is greater than the parts. I believe David mentioned thinking that he thought the deep flavor was coming from the crust but in fact the soft, chewy crumb has this flavor all on its own. I don't profess to understand why the addition of a small amount of toasted wheat germ makes this flavor so unique (I'm guessing that's it) but I'm sold. Everyone loved the rich flavor of the crumb. The crust was shattering as I cut it, pieces flying everywhere even after 6 hours of cooling. My wife was not as fond of the crispy, crunchy crust on her teeth but the dog was happy to relieve her of the trimmed edges. I had made some dark turkey broth earlier in which I dunked some chunks of this miche. A perfect melding of flavors if I do say so. Just wonderful!

We ate the bread with dinner of chicken piccata and a tomato and onion salad with my custom dressing of abundant Gorgonzola cheese and spices. The salad is a bold side dish but believe me the bread held its own with the lemon from the piccata and also the garlic/onion/cheese dressing. A wonderful meal.

I might like to try this slightly less boldly baked for the general public. I do think the over all awesomeness (is that a word?) of this bread will be enhanced by baking as a larger loaf. I would love to make a huge 8 pounder. If only I can find a way to bake it. Hmmmm.

 

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