January 18, 2021 - 10:25pm
Wheat berry blend and milling workflow for a lighter loaf
I am new to both milling and sourdough bread baking jumping in on the deep end. My target is a nutritious and flavorful loaf that has some amount of lightness (taste and crumb) and nuanced enough for the tang to come through. The KAF Extra-Tangy Sourdough Bread recipe was a good place to start as it calls for an overnight soak which is much needed for home milled flour. Tried lots of great ideas from this forum. Following is the workflow I have developed so far after 6 tries.
- Levain- 10% rye berries, 90% random berries milled and bolted to 98%. 100% hydration.
- Milling, bolting, soaking- The gains selected for the overnight soak are 40% Yecora Rojo, 30% Kamut, 30% White Sonora. The mockmill is dialed down 2 stops from stones touching hand shaking through a #40 sieve discarding 2% by weight of husk/bran, passing on the rest to a large 12" #45 sieve. My preferred sifting method is to pass a plastic dough scraper across the sieve and intermittently shaking the sieve up and down. Works well because of the large surface area. The collected bran/germ that does not pass the #45 sieve is reground and resifted reserving 2% by weight the coarsest bran. The remaining bran/germ (15% of original weight) is collected and overnight soaked at 100% hydration with 20% inoculation.
- Epoxy- Next day, gently incorporate white flour and water to bring dough up to 80% hydration. The white flour is just enough to provide structure and strength. I found this video helpful as adding dry flour to sticky dough is tricky. At end of kneading, epoxy in the soaked germ/bran. Laminate and then proceed to bulk.
- As I am wheelchair bound, my brother built a custom milling cart for me to facilitate this workflow. The sieve sits on top of a turntable.
-Stu
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I get good results with something like 60% hard red spring (YR), 30% hard white spring (Edison), and 10% some specialty grain like rye, spelt, or einkorn.
One small trick that improved oven spring, softness, and bloom in my 100% WW loaves has been making the levain out of only and all of the bran that comes out during bolting. I think I got this idea from dabrownman on this site.
I can be a bit of an extremist about whole wheat such that I almost exclusively make 100% WW for daily eating; if I'm being decadent by making bread with anything less than 100% WW, I figure I might as well go all the way towards decadence and do a brioche. Rarely anything in between. However, I am interested in trying one of the many variations on Tartine's Ode to Bourdon floating around the internet and The Fresh Loaf. The original one is 50/50 bolted/unbolted flour.
My number one recommendation is just to experiment endlessly, which is sounds like you're already doing. Here is a blog post that served as inspiration for my experiments: https://breadtopia.com/how-to-get-an-open-crumb-with-whole-grain-sourdough-bread/
Have fun with your mill! I've been milling for about a year, also with a Mockmill, and don't think I'll ever get tired of it, even if my housemates may have (but I feed them the results, so they can't complain too much about the noise!).
Thanks for the ideas. I modified my original post after several iterations of this bake. In my last attempt I did add some of the starter to the bran/germ mixture for the overnight soak. I will have to try the all germ/bran levain!
I do use 100% WW for cornbread, naan, and pizza dough. For some reason I really want a lighter bread for breakfast toast or maybe my mind is corrupted from all the open crumb pictures out there.
I get it! I love a good light, fluffy, open-crumb loaf, and make them once in a while. I'm sure there are wizards out there who can make bread like that out of 100% home-milled whole wheat. I'm not one of them, but I find making a loaf like this one entirely out of grain that I milled without discarding any part to be the most rewarding on a daily basis:
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Not to mention that I get tired of finding things to do with the leftover bran.