The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Strategies for Lean 100% Whole Wheat?

pogrmman's picture
pogrmman

Strategies for Lean 100% Whole Wheat?

Hi everybody,

I haven’t posted here before, but I’ve been baking bread for quite a while. I mostly do sourdough breads, but I occasionally do other stuff too. I bake many weekends out of the year, and have been very happy with my results. However, there’s one kind of bread I’ve been meaning to try for a while, but haven’t gotten around to yet — a lean, 100% whole wheat sourdough. I’ve done minimal work with whole grains — I think the most I’ve ever used was 50/50 white whole wheat in a quick yeasted bread I made — that loaf didn’t come out all that great (I was pressed for time and made it with no notice), but didn’t taste terrible.

My normal sourdough is a 78% hydration dough with 15% whole wheat and 2% salt (for flavor). 2/3 of the whole wheat flour is is used in the levain, so 10% of the flour in the recipe is prefermented. After letting the levain ferment overnight, I mix the rest of the flour and water and let it autolyse for an hour or so. I then mix in everything else and develop the gluten to a decent level with slaps and folds. During bulk, I usually give it four turns spaced out by 30 - 45 minutes. After bulk, I divide and preshape, rest and then shape, then proof until it’s done proofing, and bake at 450°F.

My biggest concerns with a 100% whole wheat bread are that it’ll come out too bitter and that it won’t have a great crumb. I was thinking of doing something similar to my basic recipe, but with higher hydration to compensate for being whole wheat — so 10% prefermented flour, 2% salt. Maybe 85% or so hydration, but I’m not sure. Realistically, I’ll add water until the texture is right. I was thinking of extending the autolyse to 2 hours before mixing in the levain. Is that a good idea? Aside from it fermenting faster, are there any special concerns about a 100% whole wheat dough that I should know about? Do you guys have any suggestions for how to do this bread and have it come out nicely? 

Thanks a lot!

P.S. If I do this, it’d be the weekend after next. This weekend is sourdough rosemary ciabatta!

P.P.S. In all likelihood, I’ll be using KA regular whole wheat flour for this — I go to school in a pretty small town, and thus don’t have a super wide selection of flours.

AndyPanda's picture
AndyPanda

I'm new to the forum and to most of the pro techniques that people use here.  But I've been grinding whole wheat and baking bread with 100% for years.   In the past I always added ingredients to keep it soft, but recently I got interested in sourdough and I've been making flour, water, salt, yeast (or starter instead of yeast) breads that are very flexible and soft.

What I've been doing lately is to screen the wheat after I grind it, then I do all my kneading without the bran and add the bran back in after the kneading.  That way the gluten develops as though I'd used white flour and the bran is just an add-in at the end (similar to adding seeds after kneading).      

Also .. since I've started experimenting with sourdough starter, I've been feeding the bran to the starter so it has a day or more of being broken down and softened by the wild yeast. 

So far, I've been really pleased with the texture and taste of the bread.  My attempts to shape a typical sourdough loaf have all been comical disasters - so I've been baking my bread in loafpans with a second loaf pan upside down covering the top.  Just before it goes in the oven, I give it an eggwash and sprinkle with sesame seeds, slash the top, spray it with water and put the upside down pan back on top to hold the steam in.  Then about halfway through the bake I take off the cover.   Sometimes, if it really poofs up, you get a funny square shaped loaf as it expands up into the cover but usually I don't put quite so much dough in the pan and the top of the loaf looks like a normal pan loaf.

Oh ... I like to use a tiny bit of diastic malt (like maybe 1/4 tsp to a loaf) which is supposed to convert more of the flour to sugars for the yeast.   

Here's a silly picture of a ridiculous sourdough loaf that turned out square (a bit too much dough - haha) but was terrific bread.  I use Hard White (Montana Wheat prairie gold) so you get less tannin - it's not at all bitter.    Have a good laugh at my silly looking loaf:

 

Lazy Loafer's picture
Lazy Loafer

You can turn that one whichever way up you want! But seriously, that sounds like a great way to make whole wheat bread, sifting out the bran and putting it in the levain (and /or kneading it in after gluten development).

For flavour, I've used a bit of orange juice in whole wheat buns / rolls which is nice with whole wheat. Mind you, that recipe also has milk and butter, so it's hard to tell how much the orange juice moderates the bitterness of the wheat bran.

MontBaybaker's picture
MontBaybaker

I haven't done a 100% WW yet but want to.  I've not done side-by-side testing (bran in from the start vs. added later vs. omitted to assess flavor and gluten development) - wondered if you had.  If you don't add the bran until the end, does it reduce any bitterness?  We don't have a problem with the flavor,  but I often share extra loaves with neighbors since it's just 2 of us unless a kid visits.  Your bread looks good and bet it tastes great.  I'll have to try your inverted pan trick when I use tins instead of clay.   

AndyPanda's picture
AndyPanda

For many years, I simply ground my wheat and scooped it into the mixing bowl without any sifting at all. The bread always tasted good to me but wasn't soft unless I added things like potato, milk, lecithin, honey.

I grew up eating fresh ground whole wheat bread (my father ground and baked) - so I don't think I'm the best person to talk to about the "bitterness in bran" because it doesn't taste very bitter to me. In fact, when I'm making a soft textured pasta (like for ravioli etc.) and I leave the bran out -- I use up that bran by just eating it straight and washing it down with plenty of water - I guess that makes me a regular guy :) I actually like the taste of bran.

But texture is a whole 'nother thing for me - I like a soft and flexible bread and the bran can make the bread dry and crumbly. So that's the main reason I sift it out these days and add it in later --- I don't know if this is actually what happens, but in my mind I picture the little shards of bran acting like knives and cutting the strands of gluten during the kneading (or at least sticking to the gluten and preventing the long strands).

So I find that letting the bran soak in the starter, it seems to get softer. I'm always adding the bran back to the bread, but it's offset by a few days. What I mean is the dough I'm kneading today has the sifted flour I ground today but the starter I'm feeding it has the bran I sifted out 2-3 days ago. And the bran I sifted out today will feed the starter and go into the dough I'm kneading in a day or two.

AndyPanda's picture
AndyPanda

Just for some balance ... that picture I posted earlier was a silly goof.  This is what a more typical loaf looks like using the inverted pan.  I baked this today with sifted fresh ground wheat and the bran added back in at the end and via the starter.  The crumb is always more dense at the bottom and open at the top - I think that's just inevitable with all the weight of the dough going upwards:

barryvabeach's picture
barryvabeach

pogrmman, not sure why you want to try 100% whole wheat -  I have been doing it for years for the health benefit.  I started with red wheat, and liked it, but for the last few years i use 100% white whole wheat -  it has not bitter taste at all.  This is a favorite recipe starting point for me, since it lists temps and times -  where many recipes only list times.  http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/33735/home-bread-fighting-gravity  I have not gotten quite the results as Pips, but definitely a better oven spring than many other attempts.  

bread1965's picture
bread1965

Barry.. I hadn't seen Pips 100% whole wheat recipe. It's a remarkable post. I'm a fan of high WW content breads and will definitely have to give this a try...

Question - when you made it, did you find the crumb moist? I often find that issue with my very high WW loaves..

alfanso's picture
alfanso

I made it once ~2 1/2 years ago.  According to my notes, it was easy enough to work with and fermenting, shaping and baking were pretty simple.  Here are a few notes that I made when I posted it here on TFL back then:

Phil’s formula calls for 100% “fresh milled organic” WW flour at 4 x 1000g batards. I reworked the numbers to produce 3 x 500g batards. Starting with converting my all-purpose stiff levain scrapings (which are left over in the container I generally use for levain builds), I did a single stage build – per instructions to give me the 130g of levain that I needed for my 1500g mix. The Total Dough hydration is 88%.

Notes:

  • First time at anywhere near 88% hydration for me.
  • Never worked with a hydration above 83% before – and that is my ciabatta hydration.
  • Never worked with anything more than 40% non-AP flour before.
  • I use Pillsbury WW flour, I wouldn’t know how to mill grain, nor do I really ever look for “organic” on
  • the flour label.
  • The WW was thirsty enough that working with this hydration was not an issue. Shaping was a
  • surprisingly simple task.
  • 1 hour of fermenting at room temp with 1 set of letter folds, per intructions. Followed by a 1 hour cold
  • retard. Then divided, shaped, couched and back into the refrigerator for 18 hours.
  • Scored and baked directly from refrigerator.
  • Steam 12 minutes, post steam 20 minutes, 2 minutes oven venting. Total time in oven: 34 minutes

 My kitchen is perennially ~78 degrees, so my times may not work for others.

But there are a fair number of regulars here on TFL who bake with high percentages of WW and might want to comment as well.  

pogrmman's picture
pogrmman

Thanks again for the advice. This weekend, I'm going to try a recipe based off of this (just reworked for my typical baking schedule -- which is preferment overnight, then do mixing/bulk/proofing in the day, baking off in time for dinner).

It'll be similar -- 88% hydration, 65% hydration levain, 2% salt. I'm aiming for 2 x 750g batards -- which is what I normally do.

pogrmman's picture
pogrmman

Thanks for all the feedback everybody!

Sifting seems like a good idea, but I probably won't be able to do that as I don't have a sifter (nor am I particularly keen on having one take up space in my dorm!).

That recipe looks pretty awesome -- I'm going to take a closer look at it when I have a bit more time. I've got one quick question about it though. Do I need bannetons for a long, cold proof? I use a couche, and I'm not sure it'd work all that well for an ~18 hour proof. While I've done plenty of retarded bulk ferments, I usually don't cold proof.

Either way, I probably need to rejigger it a bit to make it work with my baking schedule (and temperatures! It's chilly here).

alfanso's picture
alfanso

I use a couche and everything went just dandy.  If you want to see it at a few stages look here .