I have to say that I used Honey Whole Wheat Bread (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/recipes/wholewheathoneybread) as a starting point with a (mostly) whole wheat loaf of sandwhich bread as my goal, but that I learned to cook from a grandmother who substitutes anything for everything and doesn't believe in recipés and measuring spoons. Also, on the list of maybe-I'll-do-better-next-time's: I don't plan well and am terribly forgetful, this was my first time using whole wheat flour (which I didn't have yet when I started mixing ingredients), and my second yeasted bread (not counting the "bread" I bake at work, which comes in convenient frozen dough sticks, and where we have a bread retarder and proofer and "speed oven").

My ingredients started as these:

Preferment-
1/2 cup warm water
1/2 cup AP flour (because I didn't have any WW yet)
1/2 teas active dry yeast

I'd aimed for about 12 hours of fermenting for the preferment but it ended up being closer to 24.

The dough:
Preferment
2 cups WW flour
1/3 cup water
1/3 cup milk
1/6 cup honey
1 1/2 teas active dry yeast
1 teas salt
"Some" AP flour
"Some" sunflower seeds

---

So when I decided to use a preferment, I'd sort of forgotten that the water in the original recipe was to be used to soak the WW flour. This meant that I heated up the water and the milk and mixed them in with the WW flour, and found that it was still extremely dry. So I added another 1/3 cup hot water. And then the preferment. And then another 1/3 cup hot water. At that point I realized I probably should have used 1/6 cup for the last addition and that my dough was very very wet. But I let it sit for a while (roughly 45 minutes) and then went to adding other things. I added my honey, and the salt and mixed it in well. Then I remembered that I had to proof my yeast, because it is active dry and not instant (as the original recipe called for, which therefore didn't have a "save out this much water and proof your yeast in it" step), so I used about 1/6 cup additional water to proof my yeast, and then mixed that in well too.

The dough was still very sticky, so I started adding some more AP flour, quite a bit at a time at first, then using smaller amounts when the dough started to get not so wet. In all, I probably added roughly 3/4 cup AP flour. It was still rather sticky, so I kneaded in a bit more by hand, then let it rest for a few minutes, and found that when I came back the whole thing was not so sticky anymore. I put it into a well-oiled bowl, covered, and let it rise about 90 minutes. 

Then I degassed it and shaped it and put it into my well-oiled loaf pan. For effect, I sprinkled a bit of oatmeal on the top. I let it rise for another 45 minutes or so, before chucking it in the fridge and hoping for the best while I ran around town doing errands that I'd not taking into consideration for my timing. When I got back, I had about 30 minutes before I had to leave for work. I looked in the fridge and the dough had continued to rise until it was filling the pan, and I was afraid if I just left it, it might overflow while I was at work and I'd come home to a huge mess. So I took it out of the loaf pan, kneaded it a bit to get it back down to size, decided that I might as well add the sunflower seeds that I'd forgotten earlier, and mixed in a bit more oatmeal - maybe 1/4 cup of each, washed and dried and re-oiled my loaf pan, put the dough back in, sprinkled a bit more oatmeal on top, covered and tossed back into the fridge.

When I got home from work, I took it out, let it warm up a bit, set it in a "warming oven" my boyfriend made (which was really just a foil tent over a burner on the stove where a good bit of heat is vented from the preheating oven) for 45 minutes or so, felt how hot it actually got in the "warming oven" (when we stuck out thermometer in later, it got up to about 150 degrees) and then decided to heck with it, tossed it in the oven (which was roughly 420 degrees), turned the oven down to... well, something (side story: The oven in our new aparment has numbers instead of degrees, so we got an oven thermometer which hangs nicely from the rack, and we picked numbers and wrote down their temperature when the preheat light went off. We discovered that the difference between, say, 2 and 4 is not the same as between 4 and 6. We also discovered that our preheat light will go on and off whenever is feels the urge, and does not in fact indicate that it is no longer heating. So when I turned the oven down, I turned it to about 6 and a quarter, which turned out to be roughly 350.) I rotated it after about 20 minutes, realized I'd forgotten to score the top, let it cook another 25 minutes, checked the internal temperature with an instant read thermometer that I am so excited to have just purchased, especially since the loaf stuck so I couldn't thump the bottom, stuck it back in for another 7 minutes, then took it out and left it out. I let it cool a bit and then we went around the edges with a knife and with a bit of work it came out. We wrapped it in a towel and left it alone for the rest of the night.

When I picked it up this morning, I realized just how heavy it was. I cut into it and tried a bite. Dense but familiarly tasty. So I toasted a couple pieces, added a little butter and had an Aha! when I realized it has the taste and texture of an English muffin, complete with nooks and crannies. There was almost no oven spring, and it really is a heavy loaf, but the whole wheat taste was very mild, the sunflower seeds added a pleasant subtle flavor, my oatmeal sprinkled on top for effect gave it a nice effect, and all in all it's rather tasty. Nothing much like what I'd intended to make, but tasty and a good learning experience.

I think it looks more like a quick bread than a yeast bread:

I have made this recipe about 8 times and so am pretty familiar with it.  But I have 3 major questions:

• Is there any technique that I can use to get more height on the loaf.  Every loaf is about 1/2 inch above the pan and looks more brick like than loaf like.  Is there anything to give it more height?  I do add 2 tsps. of wheat gluten but that does not do it.  And throwing more yeast in will make for lots of holes which I do not like.
• Also, I am baking it for 45 mins.  Does anyone out there bake for longer?  Can whole wheat bread go for 55-60 mins. at 350.
• I still do not know how to knead this whole wheat bread.  I autolyze appropriately but getting this bread to knead seems impossible????

Many thanks.

Whole Wheat Bread..P. Reinhart, BBA-pg. 271, Note: Knead Only Once. Yield-3 LoavesSoaker

Whole-Wheat Poolish of a thick paste consistency. (note: he also does it as biga)

Dough

*note: i have crossed out what I do not use.

This is my second try to make Peter Reinhart's 100% whole Wheat Bread. It come out better than the last time. I'm happy about it.

I've been making the 100% Whole Wheat Bread recipe on the back of the King Arthur Whole Wheat Flour bag for about 3 months now on a weekly basis. The last few times I've made the bread, I've had an issue with air pockets under the top crust (see photo below which is about the worst I've seen yet). I haven't changed anything regarding the recipe and did not have this issue the first couple of times I made this particular recipe. I thought I might be overproofing (generally I do about a 50 minute first rise, and a 30 to 40 minute rise in the pans after shaping), but I'm not sure if that's the case. Any help anybody can give would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

-Darron from The Teacher Learns to Cook

Wheat Bread Bubble Under Top Crust

100% Whole Wheat boules

100% Whole Wheat boules Crumb

I had made the whole wheat bread from Reinhart's BBA a couple of time. i liked it a lot. It was, for me, the perfect bread for a tuna fish sandwich or a BLT.

I bought Reinhart's newer book, "Whole Grain Breads" a few months ago and read, with interest, the introductory chapters right away. Following his "journey" and the evolution of his thinking has been really interesting. But I had not baked anything from the new book until today. I decided to start with his "foundational loaf," the "100% Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread. As you can see, I decided to form 2 boules of around 1 pound each rather than making one sandwich loaf. 

 It's interesting that Reinhart's instruction have you hand knead this bread, even after a 2-3 minute machine kneading. This is a relatively dry dough. I hand kneaded it as instructed, maybe with an extra minute or two, and actually achieved window paning. That was a kick! 

 This bread is not really that different from the BBA version. The new formula uses milk (I used buttermilk.) in the soaker. The BBA whole wheat uses water. The BBA bread has an egg in it which the WGB bread does not. The end result is actually quite similar. I suspect that baking boules rather than pan loaves made as much difference as the different ingredients.

The crust felt a little soft, even after an extra 10 minutes left in the oven, but it crunched nicely when I bit into it. The bread has a pronounced whole wheat flavor but with many layers of flavor including sweetness that are lovely.

I bet this will make delicious toast for breakfast, even with competition from the banana bread from Crust & Crumb that I also baked today. 

David 

I've been looking for a 100% whole wheat sandwich bread recipe that would make a nice peanut butter and jelly sandwich (which is pretty much what I eat for lunch everyday). Lately I've been making the recipe on the back of the King Arthur Traditional Whole Wheat Flour bag, called Classic 100% Whole Wheat Bread (I've included the recipe below for any interested in trying it). I like it quite a bit, it's not too heavy or dense, and has a great wheat flavor, but I feel that it's missing something. I had a few questions for everybody here:

Has anybody tried this recipe? What are your thoughts on it?

Has anybody made any beneficial modifications to this recipe that you might want to share?

Does anybody have another 100% whole wheat recipe that makes a nice sandwich (that they might like to share)?

-Darron from The Teacher Learns to Cook

____________________________________________________________________________________

Classic 100% Whole Wheat Bread

2 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast

1 1/3 cups lukewarm water

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1/4 cup honey

3 1/2 cups King Arthur Traditional Whole Wheat Flour

1/4 cup nonfat dried milk

1 1/4 teaspoons salt

Mix all ingredients until flour is hydrated. Knead dough for 6 to 8 minutes by hand or by mixer, until smooth and supple. Ferment in a lightly greased bowl until puffy but not necessarily doubled, about 60 minutes depending on the warmth of your kitchen. Shape the dough into an 8 inch loaf and place in a lightly greased 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 inch loaf pan. Proof for 30 to 60 minutes, or until the dough has crowned 1 inch above the edge of the pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes or until dough registers 190 degrees in the center of loaf. Remove the bread from the pan and cool completely on a rack.

I have tried the following recipe 4 times and am still not able to get the proper amount of time of kneading in order to build up the gluten.  After 5 mins. the dough gets very sticky even though I lightly powder my hands with flour and sometimes give it a rest.

It calls for kneading 10-15 minutes but the dough breaks down rather than comes together with gluten build up.

The recipe is as follows however I have doubled it for my own use>

Whole Wheat Bread..P. Reinhart, BBA, p.270

Soaker

I have not posted much in the last month or so since I have been working on different variations of Hamelman's Whole-wheat bread, p 122 in his book Bread.  The recipe is fine and I am sure most people enjoy it just as it is. I have baked it about 6 times. However, for various reasons I have being trying to in some way supplement the recipe so that the crumb is smoother and creamier.  To do this I have done the following:

1-Added 1 teaspoon of gluten for each cup of flour

2-Substituted milk where water was asked for.  KA advised doing so.

Okay, the say confession is good for the soul. I confess there are two foods that for some reason confound me. One is Jello. For love or money I can't make Jello. It's either unset, runny, hard as a rock, separating, or won't come out of the mold. Mom soon learned not to ask me ever to make it.

does anyone have a good recipe for making 100% Whole wheat bread that they can share?   most recipes i find only contain about 50% whole wheat flour.  thanks,

david