I am relatively new to whole grain bread baking, having recently purchased a Nutrimill to grind my wheat. I've made many successful loaves of 100% whole wheat, but the egg bread in Laurel's Kitchen bread book is giving me fits. I am measuring and weighing my ingredients carefully and no matter how much I knead it, using both a KitchenAid stand mixer and manually kneading, this dough is way too wet. I cannot make a smooth dough without adding up to a cup of additional flour. Then I knead some more, and more, and more. I didn't want to add too much and make the dough heavy, but it just never seems to get to the proper gluten-window stage.

I just gave up and set the dough aside to rise and will see what happens. I'm not holding my breath.

Has anyone successfully made this particular loaf without additional flour? Are there any suggestions you can give me? I'm tired of wasting my flour!!!

I decided to order two english bread books to my uncle's home, who will come and visit us in a couple weeks. Books are probably everywhere cheaper than in Switzerland, this way I will be able to save around 30 Dollars, which is a lot for a student like me.

Now, question: which books? I decided to order for at least 25 $, because otherwise I'd have to pay for the shipping anyway. I rather spend my money for books only. ;)

I've already got Reinhart's BBA and Hamelman's Bread.

I was thinking about one Whole Grain book, either Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads or Laurel's Kitchen Bread book. I'm not sure which one I should take. I'm looking for a good book with interesting formulas. not only american style pan loaves. I do like hearth breads as well. It seems to me that Laurel's Book includes more formulae, but I don't know what kind of bread they are. I don't mind a couple enriched, sandwich style loaves, but I'd like to have some lean doughs as well. Do I find this in Laurel's book? Reinhart's on the other hand seems to have less theory and less formulae, but a section with hearth breads. is it worth it?

Secondly, I'd like to buy a book which includes formulae which consist out of a variety of grains, not only white flour, some sourdough . . . They can be time consuming, but please, not only! I don't want to have three day-projects all the time. A preferment - fine, sourdough - fine, but to fussy recipes don't fit into my schedule. I was thinking about Leader's Local Breads. I know about the errors in the recipes, but I think it wouldn't matter to much for me as I mostly use weight measurements? And I've already got quite some experience with baking, so I hope that I'd be able to correct errors if I find some?

Any other propositions?

I'd be very happy about some help to make my decision. And I promise to post about my baking which will result out of these books. ;)

Salome

Hi all,

I've just borrowed an original copy of the Laurel's Kitchen Break Book and I was wondering if anyone has a personal favorite from this book they can recommend?

Thanks!

Has anyone used the recipe for whole wheat sourdough from the Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book?  I am a first time sourdougher and thought I would try this one first because it looked fairly simple, but my loaves would not rise! I had to let them rise 2 to 3 times the usual time to get them to the proper "spongy" stage where they are ready to be deflated.   In the end, my loaves were thick, heavy, and almost unpleasantly sour (I thought this last part might be attributed to the high concentration of bread-per-bite since the loaves did not rise well).  Help! do you think my start is bad? I can't tell because the making of it is so different from other tutorials I've seen, but I honestly wouldn't know the difference anyway. :)

I got a new digital camera, inspired by all the wonderful pictures on this web site.  But then I had to wait for photogenic bread.  Then I had to wait for an AC power supply after the wimpy alkaline batteries died.

I've been reading Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book through, recipes and all.  I have all these great bread books, and the way to learn is to read them instead of just grabbing for a recipe.  So I've started with Laurel's book because it is whole grains.  Lots of interesting stuff in there.