Double Levain 100 % Whole Wheat Half Sprouted At 100 % Hydration

I'm sure the Pope would be more than happy to bite into a slice or two of this bread!  I can almost taste that earthy WW flavor.  With so much fresh whole wheat I'm not surprised you had a nice SD twang.  If you want to cut that back I would cut back the refrigerator time a bit and use the levains while they are fresh instead of retarding them.  Anyway, Lucy has created another masterpiece.

That pie looks fantastic as well.

Happy Baking and hi from Lexi, Max and the rest of my furry apprentices.

Complimenti sinceri,

il tuo Pane è magnifico come splendide sono le fotografie che gli rendono onore.

Un grande abbraccio e buon lavoro.

Anna

Any time I see your posts, I enjoy the great bread pictures and lots of colors from veggies, etc.!

I noted that your recipes make use of white AP/bread flour in combination with whole grain flours.  Did you have success with your method if only whole grain flours are used?  I think it may be harder to achieve such wonderful results due to poor gluten development with whole grain flours (larger pieces cut into gluten).

Lovely bread :-) And equally tasty accompaniments.

From where I'm sitting, it's looks like an apple cake. ;-)

Lucy's take on Star Wars is intriguing - I wonder what George Lucas would think of it... If Lucy was a cat, I'd be wondering if she'd broken into Poppy and Lexi's stash of catnip, because it sounds like something the girls would come up with after they've imbibed. Mind, last night Lexi was muttering something about wanting to write a Babylon 5 - Inspector Montalbano crossover fanfic. Honestly, I don't know what's gotten into her...

Thanks for the clarification.  It appears your method of soaking the larger pieces is somewhat similar to the one described by P. Reinhart in his book Whole Wheat Breads.  He suggests soaking all whole grain/wheat flour for 12-24 hours before mixing it with the starter.  In your method you are soaking the larger pieces as part of the starter.

On a separate note, I've tried to make whole grain breads and they worked out ok, but the density appears to be high - not much holes in it and that's probably driven by the fact that gluten can't develop completely.  The taste was great, though and I will continue with experimentation by applying your method and incorporating some bread/AP flour.

I am curious how bread was baked in the past.  Before commercial yeast.  People probably didn't have a process to separate true white flour, so they used whole grain flour and their results should have been good.  Perhaps this is a question for my further research...

Thanks for the information about bread history, very fascinating.  I am interested in learning more about this subject.  Maybe you can recommend a resource/book?

Hi, DA,

This is a beauty!  It's good to know that it's possible to get such a gorgeous crust and crumb in 100% whole grain.  This will be my next project and my lesson for this loaf will be Yeast Water (had to look up YW, another new concept for me).  I'm saving sprouting for the future.

I love your salad photos, they're so painterly, makes me want to go out and buy a fresh watercolor set.

Hi!

I'm just about to give a modified version of this bread a try and as I read through your post I am confused about a couple of numbers.  In the text below the second photo of the sprouted grains it reads: "The non sprouted 33% extraction hard bits were fed to the 21 weeks retarded rye sour starter" but in the recipe table under SD Levain Build it reads "22% Extraction Wheat".  Did you discard 11% of the hard bits from the non-sprouted grains?  Is the 33% a type which should read 22%?  Or is this something else that I'm just not getting?

My YW is coming along nicely but isn't ready to use yet, so I thought I'd try this loaf using just a single SD Levain build with all the hard bits so I can have something to compare a loaf made with YW to.  No sprouted grains yet either.  Baby steps.

Thanks! 

Sorry for the confusion, I haven't sprouted any grains yet, so this bread will be 100% un-sprouted.

Now I'm intrigued - why do you suggest adding the 50g of hard bits that would have gone into the YW into the dough flour rather than adding all 100g of hard bits to the SD levain?  I would have thought that hydrating all the hard bits would be a good thing.  Why would 10 pre-fermented levain be a good thing for this bread?  So much to learn!

Ha!  You give me too much credit, I don't know enough to worry about over proofing.  Now you've given me something new to worry about!

I'll have to read through your response, chock full of info as usual, a couple more times before my poor old brain absorbs it all, but I think I get it.  I know what you mean about Halloween and Christmas, but even when a loaf turns out more trick than treat, it's still usually edible.  Since I've actually met the farmer that grows my grain, I feel too guilty to waste a single kernel.

Thanks!

I’ve now tried this bread twice, once with SD starter only and again with SD starter and YW, and had the same result each time – a dripping-wet dough and nearly pancake flat bread. My guess is that the hydration is just too high for my flour, my skill level, my starter? But before I try it again at a lower (85 or 90%) hydration, I’d like to ask if you see anything that I’m doing that might be the problem instead. I’ve tried to follow your directions as closely as possible, but there are some alterations which I’ll list. 1. I’ve decided that if I make smaller loaves, I’ll be able to bake more often, so I scaled this one down to 400g each of flour and water. 2. I didn’t use any sprouted grain, just 100% unsprouted whole grain, freshly ground red wheat and white wheat, half of each. As I think I’ve mentioned previously, my grain mill grinds a fairly coarse flour at its finest setting and I’m wondering if this coarse flour might be part of the problem? 3. I followed your levain build schedule exactly, also fed the YW all at once. My extraction was 20%, so 40g hard bits fed to each. I kept the seed SD starter at 7g. This time, I didn’t add any extra water to either. After the 12 hour feed, they went into the fridge for only 21 hours after which neither of them had risen AT ALL! But they smelled yeasty and looked different, tiny bubbles regularly dispersed among the grains, so I decided to continue. I know my recently fed starter is good and the YW test worked as well. 4. After warming the starters and the autolyze, I mixed the dough and started the S&Fs. The dough was incredibly wet but oddly enough, not sticky. After 20 S&Fs, the dough started to “break” – lost its cohesiveness and spring and fell apart in my hands. I let it rest before the second set. The same thing happened each time I neared 30 S&Fs. The last 8 S&F’s were done after a 1.5 hour instead of 45 minute rest and the dough had started to rise. It seemed a little stronger at this point. 5. I retarded it for only 17 hours, partly because I didn’t want to be baking too late in the evening, and also because it was doubled by that time, so I know that the starters were active. There was water collected around the top of the dough in the bowl and a lot more at the bottom of the bowl when I emptied it to pre-round it. I discarded this water. Once I formed it and put it into a rice-floured banneton, it didn’t rise much and was so wet that water literally dripped out of the banneton! 6. I baked it in a covered ceramic baker where it oozed out to fill the bottom. The final baked bread was only about 2” high and flat. But, again oddly, the crumb was not dense but quite open and so moist that it was sticky and difficult to cut. It reached 210 degrees so I know it was baked completely. Any thoughts?

Hmmm, it looked great in PREVIEW but it lost all the paragraphing when it posted.  I'd retract it and re-post but dont know how.

I'm using a Victorio manual mill with the electric motor attachment.  I don't mean to bad-mouth it, it works like a trooper and the grind is quite consistent, just a little coarse.  I'll keep an eye out for a Nutrimill on Craig's List at some point.

The white wheat that I use is Appalachian White which is supposed to be a hard white wheat which was developed for the East where hard wheats are difficult to grow because of the humidity.  I'll give the 100% hydration recipe another try with 100% red wheat only see if that works.  One variable change at a time.  And I'll try a longer autolyse as well.  If that doesn't do it, I'll back off on the hydration in the next loaf.

Sorry I was unclear, I was actually doing 3 sets of 30 slap and folds followed by 2 sets of 8 stretch and folds on this.

You said that you adjust after the second set of slap and fold if necessary.  What would you do for a too-wet dough, just add flour a little at a time? 

I have another question for you, but I'm going to put that in a separate post.

Thanks!

If I understand your process correctly for this bread, if I follow your 24 hour levain retard and 21 hour dough retard,  mixing the dough on day 2 and forming and baking on day 3 is all done in the evening.  I am a morning person and although I'm OK with mixing the dough in the evening, I'd much rather do the forming and baking in the morning.  Is there any way to shift at least the day 3 work and maybe even day 2 work to the morning without staying up all night to feed the levains on day 1?

Yes, that's exactly the schedule I'd prefer, so doing a shorter retard or 1 stage build are great suggestions.  I've already taken my starter to work to feed it;  I'm afraid that if I start getting up at night to do it, they'll have me committed!

Baking does make me happy and your incredible depth of knowledge and willingness to share it makes me happier still!  Thank you!

but I know it won't be too soon from now before that happens. Especially after mastering the half sprouted spelt bread then discovered how phenomenal that was!

Beautiful crust and crumb as always. The taco looks really inviting and having a blue-cheese-topped salad is never a bad idea!

"The thing to remember when doing a whole grain bread is that it doesn’t need as full a final proof as white bread does before hitting the heat."

Thanks, Dabrownman. Every time I read one of your bakes I have a small 'aha' moment, and this was one of them. I'm still just soldiering away at trying to learn to bake a consistent 100% whole wheat loaf. They're coming out soft and fluffy but the crumb closes up near the bottom. I'm thinking they were overproofed.