Whole Grain Bread
Using my retsel grain mill for wheat, triiticale and rye grains for my whole grain bread, my usual recipe is
14-15 cups of flour ( typically, 3 or 4 rye, plus 3 or 4 triticale and the balance hard white wheat).
2/3 cup oil (corn or olive)
3 tbs dough enhancer(wheat starch?)
1/2 cup sesame
3 tBs sugar
3 tbs unfiltered apple cider vinegar
2 tbs salt
6.25 cups warm water.
2 tbs quick rising yeast
Mix in a bosch mixer for about 6 minutes as a no knead dough, divide and place in 3 pans to rise about an hour.
This is great tasting bread, but I can't produce texture that holds together like store bought bread of the store bought ground wheat. For a sandwich, you have eat fast as the bread breaks up too easily- my slices are about 3/8 inch thick.
While I miss the ease of making bread with the white wheat commercially produced flour, I know the quality of what I have.
I'm wondering if someone has compared the flour produced by a Retsel grain mill and the electric steel bladed mills. I've been told you can control the finess in the steel mill units. But is the finess greater than the tightest hand setting produced with the retsel stone mill?
I can't speak to any of the milling questions, since I have no useful experience in that area.
What I do observe is that the bread is approximately 50% rye (triticale has rye-like tendencies, I'm told). So, no, it won't hold together nearly as well as an all-wheat bread. Odds are also good that even if you switched to an all whole wheat bread, a loaf produced at home won't be nearly as tender or fluffy as store-bought bread. That's probably a good thing, considering all of the multisyllable ingredients that go into the stuff at the local supermarket.
Things that you can explore include a) reducing the rye and triticale content, b) reducing the oil content, c) spend some time reading proth5's blog posts about triticale and about home milling, d) read txfarmer's blog for her experiences with achieving a lighter textured whole wheat bread, e) consider switching to sourdough instead of commercial yeast, f) employ an autolyse. You may also find it useful to compare the output of your mill with the flour you previously purchased to get an understanding of particle size.
That's a lot to chew on, so I'll not try to pour a whole lot of details into your knowledge base just yet. Think of the above ideas as pump primers to drive further inquiry.
Paul
I agree with Paul's comments. I would also suggest you do 3 sets of stretch and folds in 10-15 minute intervals to build up the gluten structure. This will help prevent the finished bread from falling apart. I make mulit-grain breads mostly with SD all the time and never have any issues with my crumb structure falling apart. I also suggest you do an autolyse for about 25 minutes to 1 hour with just the flour and water, after mixing for 1 minute. Then mix for 5-6 minutes, do your S & F's and try cutting the yeast slightly and do a bulk ferment in the refrigerator overnight or for around 8-10 hours. Let the dough warm up for 1.5 - 2 hours, shape, proof and bake.
If you want the fluffy squishy texture of the store bought stuff...which I don't know why anyone does, (but that's just me), you can try intensive mixing at a high speed to pump air into the dough. As Paul mentioned, TxFarmer has posted several recipes using this technique to get a softer WW SD bread.
Good luck and let us know how it goes if you decide to experiment and feel free to ask more questions.
Ian
suggestion. Change to a normal yeast and use less of it. Delicate matrixes tear apart with too much yeast action. Try stretching the matrix slower and using longer rises.
Mini