June 28, 2016 - 5:23pm
Tonights sourdough, 50% WW
I had about 500g extra of my 100% hydration WW start (90% hard red winter wheat, 10% rye), and needed to bake a loaf for some friends, plus some for us. I wanted a bit more rise than I've been getting with 100% WW, so I used AP for half the flour bill (Reinhart's basic sourdough recipe). I'm really happy with how it came out.
edit: Crumb Shot
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I love the oven spring on that one! Good job!
Thanks! I'm still looking for the sweet spot that maximizes the use of home-milled WW with the oven spring from AP...
I look at spring and open crumb of whole grain breads differently than the amount of whole grains used. It is more important to soften and neutralize the gluten damaging effects of the bran and remembering that as the whole grain percent increases you want to use a higher gluten content flour for the remainder of the white flouror add gluten to the mix. By putting all the bran in the levain where it is wettest the longest and the acid of the LAB can work to soften it the longest and then retarding the levain for a day or two to soften it further means that you can put more whole grains in the mix while using AP flour and get a more open crumb.
My baking shows that as the whole grain increases to over 40% it is better to use a more gluten rich white flour, like bread flour, than AP to get an open crumb. If an open crumb isn't the goal, but flavor is, then anything works on the white side but the flavor can be improved greatly using multi whole grains over 1 whole grain like wheat but that is just me. It all depends what you like and luckily we can tune our recipes to get just what we want.
Well done and happy bakng
Thanks for the thoughtful reply! I actually intended to grab BF instead of AP, but the store was out and, well, time waits for no flour, or something. I'm attempting to make sure all whole milled grains have, at minimum, 48 hours hydrated before I make the final dough, either in a soaker or a starter/biga/whatever. I have not been doing a long retard after the final dough is made, however. I also believe in multiple grains, and use both wheat and rye in my starter (90/10), and often throw in handfuls of spelt or emmer before I mill.
I think I'll try to bake this type of breads in my loaf pan after my excitement for free form loaves fades. Nice work!
Good luck! Note that that is a tiny bread loaf, btw. I got four of them from 1 batch...