Making whole grain bread less dense
As the subject states, I'd like to start up a thread where people can give some ideas on how to make 100% whole grain breads less dense. What prompted this is an experiment with rye bread that I just did. The recipe I followed was:
200g rye flour
200g whole wheat flour
250 ml of water (more was needed in reality than the recipe called for)
7g yeast (I just winged it in the recipe, since mine is not powdered yeast, more like a brick of crumbly yeast)
1/2 tsp of salt
1 Tbsp of honey (I used beet root molasses)
1 tsp of caraway seeds
Method:
I ground the wheat and rye by hand using hand-cranked stone burr wheat mill. Sifted wheat and reground bran. Sifted out and discarded tough bran.
I activated yeast in warm (45C) water with the molasses. Dumped water in dry ingredients, which I had mixed together. Mixed it all, and began kneading very sticky dough. Probably didn't do enough kneading, because I hate getting really sticky dough all over my fingers, and this was a pretty high hydration.
Oiled bowl, and put dough in it to rise (double) in about two hours. Punched down, and let rise again in floured bread pan (23.5cm long x 13cm wide) for two hours. Preheated oven to 220C, then let it bake for 30 minutes. I put a pan of water in the bottom of the oven.
The result was good, but not fantastic. Wasn't fluffy or moist enough, and a bit too dense. See pictures attached.
What I'm curious about is what suggestions people might have to improve this recipe and method (with the goal of making fluffier and moister bread).
I have some limitations though... I can only get ahold of one type of wheat grain where I live, and one type of rye grain, and I mill them by hand. I do have home-grown sourdough, using the milled wheat and water to capture yeast, so I could change that.
I would love suggestions, and recipes, with these limitations in mind.
Have a look at Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads: some interesting techniques in there.
Or try a Tangzhong.
Searching this site will also help; for example, try this search.
Enjoy.
Bob
Do you have any tips on how I can convert this same recipe (same ingredients), to Tangzhong? I want to try using exactly the same ingredients as a sort of control experiment, but change method to Tangzhong, to see what the difference would be.
The method is described in this recipe comment in the link I posted earlier. The rule-of-thumb is to remove 5% of the flour from the existing recipe, mix it with 5X as much water (also removed from the existing recipe) and cook it until it gelatinizes.
But as other commenters have noted, your hydration is way too low for a WW bread; I would fix that first before trying anything else.
Rye doesn't have the proteins required to make gluten so it uses amylase to give the bread structure.and the acid int eh SD really helps this process. I would use 15% pre-fermeted flort in the levain and cut the yeast on half . For a 100% whole grin bresd like this I would be at 85% hydration on ton the low side and 100% if making it in tin .
Sorry, rye bread at 50% if the mix requires sticky fingers adn I would used slap and folds to get this dough into shape since half of it is wheat. You could make it in a machine and then do stretch and folds as it ferments too. You have a classic flying roof in your example.... so make sure that you shape the dough properly. Sticky fingers are a requirement fir shaping. Just keep you hands wet with water to keep it to a minimum. At 85% hydration you won't have to worry about too much water..
Happy Rye Bread Baking
My SD culture is being revived at the moment. It has been in deep freeze for a long time, and doesn't seem to be bouncing back very quickly. I'm feeding it 1:1:1, home-milled organic wheat -- same wheat I used to capture it -- every 12 hours. Waiting to see if I can get it to come back.
is to spread a thin coat on some parchment paper and let it air dry. When dry, scrape it off and put it in a glass air tight jar and store it in a cool dry place. To revive just feed it a bit of flour and water. 3 times, in slightly increasing amounts and it will be a lively as ever within 24 hours. Freezing SD makes the water in the cells of the poor wee beasties expand and explode the cell walls killing them. You just want them to go into hibernation and suspended animation instead.
Happy baking
do the cell walls matter if you are going to eat the frozen bread? I steam it and warm it oven with water. I froze it to keep it fresh longer. I think rye is ok on the counter or plastic bag (? ) a week but what if it has spelt in it also? How about wheat? If the bread is chewy does that mean it has a shorter counter life? How long is the shelf life? It cant be dependent on too many factors is it?
The bread would be much better as a SD.
Rye doesn't have the proteins required to make gluten so it uses amylase to give the bread structure.and the acid int eh SD really helps this process. I would use 15% pre-fermeted flort in the levain and cut the yeast on half . For a 100% whole grain bread like this I would be at 85% hydration on ton the low side and 100% if making it in tin .
Sorry, rye bread at 50% if the mix requires sticky fingers and I would used slap and folds to get this dough into shape since half of it is wheat. You could make it in a machine and then do stretch and folds as it ferments too. You have a classic flying roof in your example.... so make sure that you shape the dough properly. Sticky fingers are a requirement fir shaping. Just keep you hands wet with water to keep it to a minimum. At 85% hydration you won't have to worry about too much water..
Happy Rye Bread Baking
As the subject.
could have been and you might have also in inadvertently trapped a layer of bench flour where it separated.
Too little salt...
1/2 a tsp is 2.5g of table salt or even less sea salt.
The profile crumb picture is typical of a half rye dough with too little salt.
Try 1.8% to 2% of 400g flour or 7.2g to 8g of salt. What amounts to 1 1/2 tsp of table salt.
You will get a lighter loaf too. Low salt loaves tend to be denser. :)