August 12, 2015 - 7:19pm
Whole Wheat Levain (Jeffrey Hamelman)
I have a friend who wanted a loaf with more whole wheat in it, so I decided to try Jeffrey Hamelman's Whole Wheat Levain. It is 50% whole wheat and 50% bread flour. Hydration is 69%. I used KA white whole wheat. I think it turned out pretty good! I like how the crumb turned out. I am working on using a lighter touch when handling and forming the loaf.
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This is my favourite wholemeal bread recipe. Your work looks delicious!
Thank you! It does make some nice sandwiches.
blog on her 36 hour baguette whole wheat experiment and one line that stuck with me was that her husband preferred the taste of the 60% WW ones but she preferred the taste of the 30% ww ones so i'm guessing that 50% ww must hit the sweet spot for most everyone taste wise:-) i have to say i am in that camp with 30- 50% whole grains my favorite.
Your version really came out well, Love the crumb and that crust has to be the best tasting of all. Well done and
Happy baking
White whole wheat does have a milder flavor. I suspect that if I used regular whole wheat that I might prefer a little less whole wheat, maybe 30 to 40%. I thought the texture did turn out well. It was light and not crumbly at all.
This is one of my favorites from Bread. Yours looks perfect.
I've never tried it with white WW. I find that the offensive flavors sometimes associated with red WW are not present with optimal fermentation. In fact, Ken Forkish has a 75% WW levain that is really yummy. Hmmm ... Maybe I'll try that with white WW, just to see how we like it.
David
I didn't think about effect of fermentation on red WW. Now that I think of it, the wheat loaf I bought from Wild Flour Bread tasted really good and didn't have the bitterness usually associated with whole wheat bread. I'm going to have to give it a try to see the difference.
White whole wheat is great when baking for a family that prefers white bread!
I love using White Whole Wheat. I use it all the time instead of the regular. To me it just tastes better.
Great looking bake Kathy. I would try splitting the WW in half and use 50% White WW and 50% WW in the same proportion to the rest of the ingredients and see how you like that. As David said with proper fermentation switching to all WW instead of White WW may be the way to go but for your family it may be too much too soon :).
Good idea! Just sneak in that red whole wheat. Might create an interesting flavor doing it that way.