August 21, 2012 - 10:37am
Daves Killer Bread
I seem to have gotten the hang of my basic sourdough bread made with white flour. I can't seem to master any type of wholegrain bread. I have tried recipes with my starter and with packaged yeast and nothing seems to work. When I purchase bread at the grocery store normally it is of the whole wheat/grain variety. I am in love with Dave's Killer Bread ( blues is my most favorite). I am curious as to what you all have had success with. I want to master a wholegrain seedy bread with my sourdough. Any suggestions?
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One of Dave's secrets is adding Vital Wheat Gluten (VWG) to almost everything. You can see pallets of it here in his bakery. Zoë and Jeff also prescribe VWG in their whole grain recipes too. It's the most reliable way of keeping your whole grain recipes from coming out like bricks.
Good luck!
-Floyd
You could try Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book, or Reinhardt's Crust and Crumb. Both are good textbooks for whole grain. I'm beginning, too, and am learning a lot from those books and these forums.
We just got Dave's Killer Bread on our little Alaskan island. It is awesome bread! Good luck.
Blessings,
Voni
http://nwlaborpress.org/2012/04/bctgm-3/
Also Reinhart's books are top notch,
After reading the article about practices at Dave's Killer Bread their bread would probably get stuck in my throat if I would eat it.
Karin
For me, the first secret to 100% whole grain bread was to soak all the flour for long enough. Whole grain flour absorbs more water and takes longer to do so, because of the bran. I soak mine overnight. The other aspect is to use flour from hard spring wheat, if possible. I got noticeably better rise when I switched 2/3 of my grain from hard winter wheat to hard spring wheat. Dough made of 100% whole grain won't rise as high as that made with refined flour, but it will make decent sandwich bread.
My Sourdough 100% Whole Grain Bread (2/3 hard spring wheat, 1/6 hard winter wheat, 1/6 rye)
For comparision, this was my learning curve at the very beginning. These breads were made with 100% hard winter wheat, the last also containing whole flax.
You soak it in the fridge overnight after mixing?
I soak mine on the countertop overnight. I started out soaking it in the refrigerator, but that required either heating it in the microwave briefly or leaving it sit out for a couple of hours to warm up. I tried once leaving it on the countertop and nothing bad happened, so I now always do it that way. My leavening is sourdough and does not require that I reserve some water for rehydrating dried yeast on the morning of baking. I soak the flour with all of the liquid it requires for the recipe. The sourdough culture gets prepared by feeding the same night and on the same countertop. If you use dry yeast you may have to proceed slightly differently.
MangoChutney! And it's nice to see the difference between your first trial and the last, perfect bread.
You are right - soaking and long fermentation make all the difference. I used not to like 100% whole wheat breads because (when I bought them in Germany) they were brittle and tasted kind of crude. When I first made Peter Reinhart's 100% whole wheat (from WGB) with a soaker and starter, it was a revelation - it tasted great.
I also noticed that 100% whole wheat breads can do with a little more sweetener than I normally would use.
Karin
I recommend you check out Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads. It has lots of recipes that will lead you toward what you want.
I pretty much have been trying recipes from the internet. I have two good bread books. MangoChutney I love your pics your last loaf is beautiful. I will try the soaking method. Thanks so much.
I will also agree that the first ticket to causing 100% ww bread to work has been Peter's soaker and starters. I also have found that for some reason, in a 100% ww loaf, wheat gluten is another key ingredient. As I worked with this technique I have been able to get perfect results each and EVERY time I make my 100%ww loaves.
As I worked with this one technique and new I could get my 100%ww to work out, I was still not getting the exact results I wanted. I wanted a loaf that wasn't going to fall apart or be terrible crumbly. I was getting light and airy, but they weren't holding together so I could make a sandwich without the bread being 'crumbly'.
Then one day someone handed me their recipe. It was as good as gold; but they didn't soak their grain (ww flour). So I incorporated the soaker and starter that Peter Rheinhart teaches in his book. IT was PERFECT. As I started studying this recipe I wondered what it was that was causing my loaves to give me the quality you would find in a store bought loaf of bread. The key ingredient that helps a ww loaf hold together well but maintain springiness is potatoe startch (potatoe flakes/dehydrated). It isn't much but it really helps.