Today's planned experiment was adding vital wheat gluten (hoping for more rise and softer crumb). The unplanned one was baking the double batch of dough as one huge loaf. i don't know what I was thinking.
It was over 2kg of dough. The largest loaf I've attempted. Almost a miche? Ok, maybe it doesn't qualify cos it's oval and has too many ingredients. It had to be oval to fit in my oven. (Sigh. One day. Everyone has a Grail Loaf, right?)
Thankfully I had recently taken delivery of a stick-in thermometer... cos I also forgot what time it went into the oven. A hypothyroid moment. Note to self: write it down. Always.
800g water
1000g chakki atta flour (local Gingin Flour Mill)
0.5 tsp diastatic malt
2 tbsp vital wheat gluten
1.5 tsp salt
200g starter (same flour 1:1)
2 tbsp olive oil
Autolyse flour, vwg, malt and water for 1 hour
Bulk ferment 10 hours @ 22°C then overnight in the fridge. (That was unplanned too, life got in the way.)
1.5 hour proof in an oval banneton.
Baked inside a pair of large Ikea roasting pans (about 40 x 32cm - it only just fits in my oven and this monster bread filled it!). One of them was used upside down as a lid. Spritzed with a garden sprayer. Took the lid off after 30 minutes.
Called it done when the internal temperature was 94°C because I didn't want it any darker and it sounded hollow.
Wonderfully tangy from the surprise extra long bulk fermentation. Crispy crust - grateful for that - I was afraid it would get tough from the added bake time. And soft crumb. Yeah, we cut it a bit early... couldn't wait.
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That loaf expanded like a son-of-a-gun, didn't it? Nice job. I think it's time to get another sack of atta myself.
TomP
So, the vwg was a successful addition, would you say? I was going to suggest some milk for fluffiness, but you said elsewhere you're on a plant- based diet.
Yes, VWG certainly looks to have helped. I will use it again, in pans the same as my last bake, to have a closer comparison. There aren't many big holes to see, but it's definitely not a dense loaf.
Dairy milk isn't an option. Soy? I make it so it's only soy and water - no additives to interfere. I can also try okara. Or a little soy flour. I think I read somewhere about potato flakes being a substitute for dairy milk (maybe in Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book).
This is pic from a sandwich loaf I made that was all atta and VWG. I put quite a bit of yogurt in to tighten up the crumb. When I omitted that, I could get it more open. (Yogurt and egg whites are the main reason this loaf is so light in color; I wanted something that was more approachable to people used to store-bought white bread.)
Vital wheat gluten, a long autolyse, and intensive kneading were the major components of how I got these results. Looking at your crumb shots, I suspect those methods would help you get fluffier loaves. If you're interested I can try to provide some suggestions for adapting my process to your recipe, but it would be more time and work for you.
For vital wheat gluten, I’d suggest using this calculator and targeting 13% protein content to start and seeing how you like that. You might already be in that range, but I couldn’t find nutritional info for your mill’s atta. You'll need to have the protein content for your atta; if you can't find that information for your VWG, I'd estimate it at 75/100g.
Soy milk or soy flour may help. I’m not sure about okara, but if I were to place a bet I think that would be more inhibitory to expansion than supportive. I suspect 2% soy flour, so 20g for this double batch or 10g for a single, would be the better thing to try first.
Lovely loaf Amanda!
Well done too on achieving this bread with chakki atta, a flour which isn't the easiest to work with when used on its own in a bread. During COVID days I got quite attached to this flour and it was my preferred flour then. I'm talking here about a chakki atta from India, yours may be different as Google tells me it is from Australia? Fabulous and cheap flour for making naan and rotis and other flat breads with the right texture and flavour, but it turns out that for me, it wasn't doing me many favours with my sourdough and when I finally gave in and started using other local wholewheat flours I got better results.
At the moment, I find that I actually bake quite similar breads to this recipe, with a few differences. Firstly, I make the same amount of dough, but make two batards with it. I find the bake to be easier with a smaller bread and slicing is easier.
Secondly, I use a large pre-ferment with my current approach for all wholewheat lean breads. So, for a total batch of 960g wholewheat flour, 40g of VWG and 20g of salt, I'll use about half the dry-mix (or maybe 40%) with the 200g of levain and make a pre-ferment out of that first, and the final dough is made from that pre-ferment about 4-6 hours later with the rest of the flour. I find that doing it this way, it controls the acidity build up better and the dough feels stronger towards the end with an improvement of crumb openness, at least as much as one can get with all wholewheat. I also use a lower hydration than 80% (perhaps 65-70%) with my flour which isn't as thirsty as atta.
-Jon
The gluten calculator was very helpful:
I was adding the vwg to my flour rather than including it in the total. And not using enough. That's my next bake: correct that. And knead more.
And make two batards instead of a monster. Much more sensible. (I did learn that twice as big takes a lot longer to bake. And testing done with a thermometer is helpful.)
I don't think that breaks my 'change one thing' rule by too much. the soy flour/milk and preferment trials will happen one by one after that. Many thanks!
Yes, I'm in rural Western Australia, right on the edge of the wheatbelt.. So far, sourcing flour is proving difficult: just the supermarket or expensive imports (from other states) in healthfood stores. I am grateful to have found the offerings in the Indian grocery stores. I called the Gingin Flour Mill which is local to me (I still buy it at one of the many Indian grocery stores) to ask about other types of flour, but at the moment the Chakki Atta is all that is made. I buy Plain flour or Wallaby Baker’s Flour from the supermarket- both come from interstate, I'm sure. Seems crazy. I want to buy local at a fair price.
Nice work, Amanda! I love atta flour and used it very often in the past, my starter tend to give atta nice chocolatey flavor.
Have fun with Atta!
Jay