Hi.  I'm new to this forum but have been baking my own whole wheat bread for 5 years now.  I love it!  I own a Bosch and a Nutrimill.  I am looking for a good recipe for making whole wheat pizza dough.  I've never made my own pizza dough and would like to start.  I always weigh my bread dough and was wondering how many oucnes pizza dough should weigh?  What about if I wanted to make individual calazones as well...how much should they weigh?

Sharon Pickersgill =)

When I try to make bialys, I get too much oven spring - they poof up like round dinner rolls.  In the latest batch, 66% whole wheat no less, the center depression with the onions and poppy seeds sprang up higher than the outer rim.

I suspect that my dough was too soft, ie too much hydration.  

Does anyone have a formula for a very stiff whole wheat dough (doesn't have to be 100% WW, but that would be fine), and/or instructions for shaping/proofing/baking that minimize the oven spring?

Thanks

Today's bake was Daniel Leader's Whole Wheat Genzano Country Bread, from his Local Breads book.  This bread combines a biga naturale for flavor with yeast for shorter, more predictable fermentation times.

The formula is straight-forward: the biga, water, equal parts whole wheat and bread flours, salt and yeast.  Final hydration works out to about 77%.  Based on Leader's description of the dough, I was expecting something almost in the ciabatta realm.  It turned out to be less gloppy than a ciabatta dough, perhaps because of the extra absorbency of the whole wheat flour.  Still, it was definitely better handled by the mixer than by hand.  I'm a little leery of his mixing directions, though.  First, he recommends an 10-minute run at speed 8 on a Kitchen Aid, followed by an 8-10 minute run at speed 10.  I didn't run it quite that long, or quite that fast, since I was seeing good gluten development.  Plus, the dough was clearing the sides of the bowl, even though it was very sticky.  The directions indicated that it probably cause the mixer to walk.  Hah!  I had to hold it down, what with the ball of dough slapping and releasing from the sides of the bowl.

After the mixing/kneading stage, the dough is dumped into an oiled container for 1-1.5 hours until it doubles.  It is then treated to a series of stretch and folds in the container (I used a plastic bowl scraper for this exercise), then allowed to double again.  Having finished bulk fermentation, the dough is scraped out onto a floured counter, divided in two, and (very gently) shaped into rough, rectangular loaves that are placed on bran-strewn pieces of parchment paper for their final rise.  The risen loaves go onto stone in a preheated oven, with steam.  The initial temperature is 450 F, which is dropped to 400 F for the second part of the bake.  Oven-spring was good.  The crust color is a deep brown, but not the near-black color promised in the formula.

The finished bread looks like this:

The crust is thin and crackly, although I expect it will soften because of the internal moisture.  The flavor is very good; closer to that of a yeasted bread than to a sourdough but with some complexity that isn't usually present in a straight dough.  There doesn't seem to be the bitterness that sometimes shows up in whole wheat breads.  The crumb is moderately open, though nothing like the big holes of a ciabatta.  That's not bad, since this will be used primarily for sandwiches.  The breads are relatively light in weight for their size, another indicator of an open crumb.  I'll have to get a crumb shot, later.

I will definitely make this again, although I may experiment with leaving out the yeast.  That should swing the flavor profile in a whole 'nother direction.  Before getting to that, though, I have my eye on a couple of different rye recipes from Local Breads.

Paul

I was just mixing up some dough to make some whole wheat sandwich bread, and decided to use molasses in place of honey, which I'm a bit short on at the moment. I've substituted in molasses successfully on a number of occassions, with one exception, and that problem seems to be repeating itself now. The dough (375 grams of flour, 75% Whole wheat, 70% total hydration, includes 30g molasses) has turned into a soft stone, and feels like I'm kneading 30% hydration dough, and it won't allow itself to be pushed back together if I try to seal up the seams. The gluten doesn't seem to be developing either, it just tears whenever pressure is applied and the dough easily tears apart. I tried adding more liquid, but all that happened was the dough discharged an equal amount of brown goop when I tried to knead it in. Anyone know what's going wrong here?

The dough is resting a bit now, I'm going to try kneading it a bit more, then go through the standard ferment - form - proof - bake process and see what happens. I had this happen once before and I got a brick out of the oven... will post with continued results.

I'm trying to bake ezekiel bread which is a mixture of whole grains and some bean flour.  I am trying to get some holes and a little lighter texture like I did when I made another whole grain bread.  The problem is I don't know what I did before to get the holes.  I have read much on surface tension and hydration.  I am wondering how you get good surface tension without overworking the dough and degassing it.

Thank you.

Now that I figured out how to upload photos, here is another one. I have been baking this one a lot, mainly because it's easy to handle and make, my family likes it a lot, and it lasts a long time... Simply following BBA's formula for Poilane's Miche. I have a very feisty starter that helps out a lot I think. Anyone else tried this? How is the crumb in yours? I am curious...

I've been asked (via Messages!!) to post the recipe I used for Pitas.  I made two recipes, but I'll post the one that was designed as a Pita recipe.  Apparently just about any bread recipe will work, although I don't know about high-hydration doughs.

In my experimenting, I've become curious about the role of the yeast.  My conjecture is that the yeast just helps with the development of the gluten and of the formation of a gluten skin (as I think someone called it).  I don't think it has much of any role in the puffing up.

This recipe was taken from Beatrice Ojakangas' Great Whole Grain Breads.  It's on page 277 and is called "Whole Wheat Pita Bread".

• 1 package active dry yeast (I'm sure I used considerably less)
• 2 1/2 cups warm water (warm if you go the proofing-of-the-yeast route - I don't - instead, I go for long refrigerator rises, usually overnight)
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 tablespoons salad oil
• 5 1/2 to 6 cups whole wheat flour

I won't go into the details of making the dough.  Do it however you usually do it.  Develop it into a smooth ball, but it doesn't need to rise.  Ojakangas has you let it rest about 15 minutes after the mixing and before kneading 10 minutes on a board.  Then you cover it and let it rest 20 minutes.  Then you "punch dough down" and divide into four parts, and each part into four more, for a total of sixteen.  So the dough for a single standard loaf of bread will make about eight standard pitas.

Shape each piece of dough into a small ball and roll out to make a 6-inch circle.  I don't know how thick this is, but I suspect it's 3/16 of an inch.  In my subsequent pita trial, I used the special rubber bands for rolling pins and rolled them out to 1/8 inch, and they were quite a bit thinner.  Cover and let rise 30 minutes.

Here's where the Ojakangas narration gets confusing.  I'll adapt.  While the pitas are rising, preheat the oven to 500 degrees with a stone in place (for 30 minutes).  Arrange six pitas at a time on parchment paper.  With the assistance of a cookie sheet - a rimless one or a rimmed one turned upside down - transfer the pitas and the parchment to the stone.  Bake 4-5 minutes "or until rounds are puffed and tops begin to brown."  But don't wander off.  Turn on the oven light and sit on the floor to watch.  Mine started to puff up at about the two minute mark, and they were fully puffed up about a minute later.  Quite a show.

Rosalie

What is the limit to the amount of fresh minced garlic I can put in a loaf of whole wheat bread. The loaf contains 4 1/2 cups of flour.  We love garlic but I seem to remember reading somewhere That too much and it won't come out right.

Gail

OK, I know you're out there.  Maybe those Birks are getting dusty or they're hidden in the closet along with your beaded vest and shrunken tie-dye, but you're really hankerin' for some good ol' fashioned hippie bread.  Just like the kind you used to eat while working on your macrame choker and groovin' to Cat Stevens before he became public enemy number one.  Here you go.
A friend of mine was looking for something all-too-healthy, and I came up with this recipe.  It is primarily whole wheat with buckwheat flour, flax seeds, toasted almonds, and other goodies.  It's not exactly airy like ciabatta, but it sure has a lot of flavor.  Plus, if you need to, you can put some loaves over your wheels in the bed of your truck in the wintertime to get some extra traction.  I've tried a few different shapes, and the boule seems to help the loaf out the most because you can give it some height in the shaping for a boost of confidence in the proofing stage.  Try it out and hope you like it!  This is a link to the recipe in PDF format.

-Mark

http://TheBackHomeBakery.com

PS, I'm about 2 weeks from finishing a couple of instructional DVDs. If you're interested, I can email you when they're ready, or you can stay tuned here since I'll be posting about it on TFL when they're done.

I just pulled my last brick of SAF-Instant out of the freezer, and of course I need it now. O: )  Can I use it extra cold for my WW sammie bread, or do you need to let it thaw to just cold?

TIA,

- Jennifer : )