Sifted Wholewheat Sourdough Miche

Submitted by foolishpoolish on February 19, 2008 - 9:48am

Sifted Wholewheat Sourdough Miche

I have a confession to make. I'm not the world's biggest fan of wholegrains or wholewheat breads. For me they are forever associated with the blech I ate because 'it's good for you' when I was a child. This is my first attempt at reclaiming wholewheat for my palate. So far I'm quite happy!

(Yes yes, I guess since it uses sifted wholewheat flour it's technically not wholewheat but mostwheat. The brand I used had mercifully coarse-milled bran so it was easy to sift out the bigger chunks. Don't worry, the bran went to a good home in the form of bran cookies!)

The result? There is a definite 'maltiness' to the bread (which i could smell even while the raw dough was being mixed...I'll explain later). There was virtually none of the 'blech' factor I associate with wholewheats. Yes the crust was a little underdeveloped on the top (I was using a foil cover to prevent scorching from running the oven about 50F too hot) but the taste, texture, crumb are as good as I could hope for. Moist, malty, slightly sweet, nutty, creamy, sour etc. I'm pretty pleased overall.

Having read other posts and blogs I was somewhat overwhelmed by the variety of wholegrains and wholewheat flours that are used in their marvellous breads. I tend to use ingredients that are readily available to me (ie supermarket) and thus most of the specialty/'artisan' flours are not going to surface in my baking (yet). Anyway, limiting myself to one flour only, I experimented a little to try to extract maximum flavour out of a single flour. When I sit down long enough to get my thoughts together I'll try and post the full procedure/recipe.

To give some idea, it consisted of 3 parts. The first two are a levain and soaker. The third is what I call a 'pregel' which is something I've been experimenting with for a while in white breads. It bears some similarity to what I now know to be a mash...although I suspect my reasons for using it are different. I haven't read Peter Reinhart's Wholegrains so I wasn't aware until very recently how to make a 'mash' for baking bread.

Anyway more to follow (if I can remember!)

I'm looking forward to making this again the future. Hope you will too.

--FP

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Wholewheat Miche Sourdough

Submitted by foolishpoolish on February 19, 2008 - 10:13pm.

Recipe

Day 1: Mix and let levain rise, mix soaker and make pregel

Day 2: Mix final dough, proof and bake

Day 1
Levain

300g Sifted Whole Wheat Flour (I used Dove Farms Organic)
200g Water
75g Sourdough Starter (I used a 100% hydration white starter)

Combine the ingredients and let it ferment until doubled in volume before refrigerating overnight.

Soaker

300g Sifted Whole Wheat Flour
30g Salt (I used coarse sea salt which I ground a bit finer)
210g Water

Mix ingredients thoroughly and let it sit at room temperature (or a little warmer) in a container overnight.

Pregel

300g Sifted Whole Wheat Flour
300g Water

Bring the water up to just below simmering in a saucepan and add the flour. Continue to cook on a very low heat until the flour/water mixture becomes a lump of dough which will look considerably darker (than the soaker for example). Keep cooking, maintaining a 150 to 160 degrees internal temperature for about 10 minutes. The amount of pregel you will end up with in the final dough will be about 540g (you're going to lose some moisture during cooking as well as flour sticking to the side of the pan).

Day 2

Remove the levain from the refrigerator and let it sit at room temperature for about an hour to take off the chill (my levain continued to rise a little bit and was just past the point of peaking when I mixed the final dough).
Mix the final dough. It will be incredibly sticky at first but continue mixing until it comes together in a homogenous lump. Knead for 10 minutes (due to the pregel, you're not going to get a windowpane but trust me the final crumb will be just fine)...add in a few stretch and folds before shaping into a boule.
Allow dough to rise in an oiled container until roughly 2 times original size. Apply stretch and fold twice during the rise at about 100 minute intervals. This rise may take quite a while (took me 8 hours but it was coooold day).
When dough has risen, return the dough to a work surface (it will degass as you work it) and apply a couple more stretch-and-folds before shaping into a boule and placing in a well floured banneton / basket / bowl for second proof (about 1 1/2 times original - you should be able to discern bubbles of gas in the dough).
Heat oven to 450F (preferably with baking stone or pizza stone)
Turn out the dough onto a peel or baking sheet sprinkled with cornmeal or semolina.
Score as desired and slide on to the baking stone in the oven.
Bake with steam (however you like to do this) for about 15 minutes and continue to bake without steam for about 45 minutes or whenever an internal temperature of 200F is reached.
Allow to cool completely and preferably leave for at least 1/2 day before eating. I've noticed this bread seems to taste better as the day goes on. I don't doubt it will be great tomorrow. The moisture in the dough should hopefully let it keep longer than usual.

Submitted by holds99 on February 20, 2008 - 9:18am.

FPFrom here that crust

From here that crust looks perfectly fine to me. That's a really nice looking loaf with great interior. From my experience, it's a challenge using a home oven for temps. in excess of 475 deg. F., especially for larger boules that take longer to bake. In my oven I use a stone but also use a pan lined with parchment because I have had some scorching problems at higher temps, particularly on the bottoms, when placing the loaf directly onto the stone at the onset of baking. Sometimes I move the loaf onto the stone during the final 10 minutes of baking if the bottom isn't sufficiently brown. But that's a great looking loaf of bread you made and near, if not perfect, interior/crumb. I'm going to try it because I really like whole grain breads especially whole wheat and you've got a real winner there. Thanks for the tip on letting it sit for half a day before cutting. Really looking forward to trying this one.

P.S. Since you mentioned having to cover the top with alum. foil to keep the top crust from getting too dark and that modestly affected some of the top crust/spring I'm thinking I'll try using a preheated cast iron dutch oven when I make it. Maybe that will reduce the problem of over-browning of the top crust. Any thoughts on that idea?

Submitted by foolishpoolish on February 20, 2008 - 9:43am.

Cast Iron Dutch Oven

Thanks HO

The dutch oven idea sounds great!. Not unlike using a cloche I imagine (not that I have either of these items at the moment).

In fact I've seen some of the no-knead bread recipes suggest a dutch oven as being ideal for baking that bread. I think the advantages are that it solves both heat and steam issues. The obvious downside is that the bread can only be as big as the cast iron.

Also, I might be tempted to dampen the surface of the dough prior to putting it in the oven..not possible on 'well floured' breads of course.