The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Whole Wheat French Bread

Morgon77's picture
Morgon77

Whole Wheat French Bread

Can anybody advise me about how to make whole wheat french bread? Obviously it would be a portion wheat, not the whole content. I've been using the French Bread recipe from "The Bread Baker's Apprentice"...should I replace the bread flour in the second portion with wheat? And I'm leaning toward the white wheat from King Arthur, rather than Graham flour. Also, do I need to presoak it at all, if so?

Floydm's picture
Floydm

I'm just starting to tinker with more whole wheat breads. The rustic bread is probably the closest thing to a whole wheat french on this site. It is good, but probably not as wheaty as what you are looking for.

I don't think a presoak would be required, but it might help. I'd say give it a shot and, if you don't get what you are looking for, try again without.

Joe Fisher's picture
Joe Fisher

Why not try Mr. Reinhart's Pain de Campagne? It's 15.8% whole wheat flour, and just delicious.

-Joe

Patrick's picture
Patrick

Reinhart's "Poolish Baguettes" recipe in BBA is a whole-wheat French bread. I just made some this weekend and it's great. The recipe calls for sifting the whole-wheat flour to remove most of the bran but the mesh on most sifters is too coarse. So I just used a strainer we had around the kitchen ...something like this:
http://www.cooking.com/products/shprodde.asp?SKU=138039
...simply vibrate it back and forth to make it "sift" the flour and separate out the bran - it worked perfectly.

Patrick