Vegan whole wheat bread
I'm a noobie and a complete novice. This is my first post here as well.
My family and I are vegan and I want to make vegan whole wheat bread in our Sunbeam bread machine. Over the last 6 months I have been using this recipe: https://www.breadmakermachines.com/recipes/100-whole-wheat-bread-recipe/ extremely successfully with one caveat: My wife got "white bread flour" from Costco. But, with this white bread flour, the loaf came out great.
Then we ran out of that flour and I wanted to make whole wheat bread. So I bought a (wait for it) 25lb bag of wheat flour from Costco. But my 2 attempts with this flour have been unsuccessful. The loaf is rising about 60% of the white bread flour loaf. So the whole wheat loaf is too dense to eat. On the last attempt I doubled the yeast and gluten, and while the rise improved, it was still only 70% ish of the white bread flour.
I'd really appreciate any advice from the community.
Are you using solely whole wheat flour? Because whole wheat contains more bran, which can interfere with gluten bonding, doughs made from it need to be handled more carefully and don't rise as much in general.
I will add a caveat- I don't know if it can be done totally in the bread machine and I will explain why in the process of answering this post.
WW bread needs2 things to happen in order to achieve maximum fluffiness.
1. After the ingredients are mixed, there needs to be a soaking time built in so that all the branny bits have time to become absolutely waterlooged. If you do not do this, then those same branny bits with the dry center (think twigs) will continue to absorb water from the baked crumb and your slices will crumble in your hands as you try to eat a sandwich. They also impede the development of the starchy gel before being baked.
2.IT IS ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to develop the dough to windowpane. HERE is a good link and there are many more if you enter "windowpane" in the search bar. Most bread machines are not able to knead the dough long enough to achieve a good windowpane. What a windowpane demonstrates is that the starchy gel in the flour is fully hydrated along with the gluten strands. It is this strechy,balloony quality that traps the gasses produced which then expand and raise the bread to fluffiness. The branny bits are suspended in a properly windowpaned dough. The starchy gel in white flour and bread flour is more easily hydrated and accessible to the water so it is easier for the machine to develop these flour doughs.
If you have a highly programmable bread machine, you may be able to adjust settings for WW. Some actually allow you to adjust the length of soaking or "autolyse" after the first mix or even the amount of kneading time. Explore your machine. The fluffiest WW bread may be a combo of machine mixing, resting and then either re-set the kneading until you achieve windowpane or hand knead and then return the dough to the machine for rising and baking.
Most people like all white bread better than WW at first. If you want to start acquiring a taste for WW or whole grain, start by increasing the percentage-go half white and half WW and work up from there.
Whatever you do-bake some deliciousness for you and your family.
It's hard to diagnose things remotely, but I'll share some of the things I learned using my bread machine and whole wheat.
100% whole wheat will never rise as much and be as airy as a 100% white flour loaf. So it depends on your expectations. I make whole-wheat hearth style loaves now, round "boules", and I still need to use 10% white flour to get a decent crumb. I'd rather make a decent enjoyable loaf than be a purist and insist on 100% whole wheat.
In my opinion/experience: The two most important things with a bread machine are:
a) _quantity_ of dough. You have to make the dough ball the right size so that the paddle "walks" it around the pan and you get a proper knead. Yes, there is a range of size, minimum and maximum, but if the dough ball is not "walking around" properly, if won't knead properly.
b) _Hydration_ level. This is also a critical factor in the dough ball "walking around" the pan. If it is too wet-and-loose, the paddle just smooshes it and it won't walk around. If the dough ball is too dry, it won't mix and knead properly.
Different brands of flour behave differently, and even different bags of the same brand dry out differently, and they even dry out as you store them. So adjusting hydration is almost constant, every bake.
That sufficient kneading, and juuuuust the right hydration are critical factors in optimizing the rise and crumb structure of whole wheat. Especially because, as clazar mentioned above, WW is less forgiving, and has less margin of error than white flour.
Bottom line: whenever I used a bread machine, I basically had to "tweak" it every time, by adding more water, or adding more flour, or even pinching off and removing some dough to keep the dough ball the right size.
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More options:
1. Try a recipe specifically for your exact model of bread machine. The owner's manual usually has those. Every bread machine recipe you find elsewhere, will have to be "tweaked" in order to be made successfully in your particular model.
2. whole wheat flours vary in their baking characteristics even more than white flours. soak (autolyse) time, hydration levels, ferment/rise time, percent of white flour needed, will vary from each brand/type of whole wheat flour. Change brand, or change type within a brand, and you have to start all over with your "tweaking" experiments/procedures.
3. Look for a recipe that is a combination of white and whole wheat flours. You can usually find a 50/50 recipe that is much easier, and has a much wider margin of error. Once you gain experience, then experiment with larger portions of whole wheat. I think my best/healthiest bread machine loaves had about 25% white flour.
4. with 50% or more whole wheat, try increasing the mix/soak time by this: As soon as the initial mix is done, turn off the machine, turn it back on, and start the cycle over again, at square one. Whole wheat takes a while to absorb water.
5. Too much vital wheat gluten gives a cake-like crumb. Use no more than 1 tsp per cup of whole wheat flour. If you use 50% white flour, that means 1/2 tsp per cup of flour overall.
6. Because whole wheat takes time to absorb water, it's hard to judge, early on, if your dough ball is hydrated properly. So take notes of exactly how much water you started with, and measure and record how much you add. The "mix" phase hydration level may look off, but it's the _knead phase_ that counts, in terms of getting the dough ball to "walk around" with the proper sIze and hydration.
7. Be sure to use the "whole wheat cycle" of the bread machine. That will give it at least some of the extra mix, rest, and kneading time it needs. But I suspect, due to my machine's performance, that the designers designed the whole-wheat-cycle for a 50% WW dough, not a 100% WW dough. I think they went for what was most commonly used, so as to not make it too complicated.
Good luck. and bon appétit.