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Can anyone help me?  I am new to bread baking nad want to bake a successful whole wheat loaf without resorting to a mix with bread flour. I have not been very successful using Reinhart's whole wheat recipe in his book.  I began by following the recipe to the letter.  I have added gluten to the poolish and the dough and still get a lackluster loaf.  I use bulgar wheat as the soaker.  I have laso tried spent grain.  The dough barely rises to the lip of the pan and then drops some when it bakes.  The taste is acceptable.  Are my expectations too high?

• World Bread Day '07 - The roundup - part 1 (A-F)
  Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, China, Czech Republic, France
• World Bread Day '07 - The roundup - part 2 (G-I)
  Germany, Greece, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy
• World Bread Day '07 - The roundup - part 3 (J-S)
  Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Saudia Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland
• World Bread Day '07 - The roundup - part 4 (T-Z)
  UK, USA

After several busy weekends when there wasn't much time for bread baking, I had a nice leisurely weekend when I could experiment with baking some loaves from Daniel Leader's Local Breads. The two small loaves on the left are Meteils au Bleu (Little Bue Cheese Rye Loaves), a very mild and moist rye (made with a white starter) chock full of a regional blue cheese called bleu d'Auvergne. The volcanic looking boulder in the back is Pane Casareccio di Genzano that Zolablue and Bwraith both discussed a few weeks back, a very large open crumb pagnotta style bread. The seeded rye in the front is Chleba, Light Silesian Rye, and the boule on the right is Pain de Campagne, one of my favorite breads. A lovely weekend it was, baking my way through France, Italy and Poland.

Finally had a chance to do one of Peter Reinhart's recipes, from Whole Grain Breads.  Did the multi-grain struan, since that's his signature bread.  Here's the result, lightly dusted with black sesame seeds.  Tastes as good as it looks! 

Alan 

here's the recipe I followed:

Whole grains:

            Barley

            Millet

            Quinoa

            Oat flakes

            Wheat flakes

King Arthur Whole Wheat

Saranac Pale Ale

Soy Milk

Skim Milk

Kosher Salt

Sorghum

Organic canola oil

King Arthur “New England” starter

more photos, etc., at my blog, http://alan-ohio-bread.blogspot.com

I love making bagels ! I been a cook my whole life however I started baking bagels 1 years ago and the guy that trained me was really good and on the third day I was doing it all by myself , my boss said she never seen any one learn so quick !

now I'm trying new things cause I'm not tied down with the corprate bullshit ! I am starting to create my own yeast ,new bagels and expanding into other areas of baking ! I feel like I have great desicion making when it comes to baking and I want to start learning other types of breads and pasteries how ever I dont want to go to school for it !

I am also conflicted cause although I want to do these things and I can see myself doing it for the rest of my life I also want to be an addiction speacalist ! well these are my thoughts !

I'm very happy with this big loaf, of mostly white bread flour with some whole wheat and cornmeal for a flavor boost. The taste was fabulous. :~) I think it's my first white sourdough, and it's definitely the first formula I concocted wholly on my own, as opposed to tinkering with an existing recipe or formula. I didn't weigh the finished loaf, but it was 12 inches across. The unbaked dough was just over 3 pounds.

Since my evening's breadwork was postponed by an unplanned movie, I mixed it just before bed using icewater. I left the 68F dough to sit in the 76F room, planning to not look at it until after a good night's sleep. But when the cat woke me up 4 hours later, I had to look in on the bread. The dough and the room were both at 75F.

For World Bread Day '07 my entry is Parker House Rolls, made according to the 1896

recipe by Fannie M. Farmer

This sweet potato sourdough with pumpkin seeds was my bread for World Bread Day. Something new for me, using sweet potato in the dough. It made the dough very orange and I was afraid the baked bread would look garish, but it was nicely golden. A good October bread.

Working from home has its disadvantages: it's all too easy to blur work into home-life, you're somewhat isolated from co-workers, and it's tempting to try to do chores when work is slow.

But bread baking poses no problems at all. Most of bread baking, especially when you use the stretch and fold method to develop dough instead of traditional kneading, consists of 2-3 minute bursts of activity separated by long periods of waiting. The trouble, of course, is that the timing of those little bursts of activity is really, really important. Working from home, the kitchen is always just a few steps away from my computer, and doing the work of making bread takes about as much time as going to fetch a fresh cup of coffee.

Lately, I've been doing a lot of sourdough baking, even when the bread itself isn't truly a sourdough bread. For instance, here's my results from baking Peter Reinhart's Mash Bread, from his new (and fabulous) book, Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads.





The sweetness of the bread was really surprising, and I was astonished by how much oven spring I got. It's easily the best I've ever gotten from a 100% whole grain bread. Unfortunately, I was in a hurry and didn't let the sourdough mature fully, so the flavor was less than I'd expected. In short, sweet, but bland. I'm eager to try it again, though, and next time I'll let the sourdough fully ripen, which is especially important, since the sourdough is used almost exclusively for flavoring rather than leavening. If you want to make this bread, I'd suggest heading over to Bill Wraith's excellent write-up.

I had some starter left over, so I made up some sourdough pizza dough -- two of the doughballs went in the freezer, while the others went into the fridge so that I could make them up for dinner the next night. Probably two of the best pizzas I've made. A woman at the Corvallis Farmer's Market was selling wild chantrelle mushrooms, so I got some, sauteed them in a bit of butter, and plopped them on the pizza. They were great, along with some black olives and turkey-chicken sausage:



The crust was nice and holey!



Here's how I made it:

Formula

• Whole wheat flour: 50%
• AP flour: 50%
• Water: 80%
• Salt: 2%
• Olive oil: 5%
• 15% of the flour is pre-fermented as starter

• Whole wheat starter (75% hydration): 100 grams
• Whole wheat flour: 130 grams
• AP flour: 180 grams
• Water: 250 grams
• Olive oil: 18 grams
• Salt: 7 grams

I do love bread! It really is the staff of life, don't you think?

As far as I'm concerned, every day is bread day. We invariably have buttered toast each morning for breakfast. Sandwiches are not uncommon for lunch. Bread is often the starch we choose to go with dinner. (A crusty French-style loaf is wonderful with stews and soups; cubes of older bread make great stuffing for roast chicken or croutons for salad; corn bread is a must with chilli; one really can't have palak paneer without naan or chapatis!) And if there's no dessert made and someone neeeeds dessert? Cinnamon toast!

Even though we like so many different kinds of bread, when I heard that Zorra (kochtopf) had chosen an open theme for World Bread Day 2007, I didn't have any difficulty deciding what bread to feature. I knew exactly what I wanted to bake: walnut raisin bread with wild yeast.

And how did I come to this decision to bake walnut raisin bread? In September, my sister-in-law sent me some of her bread recipes, including her favourite: "walnut raisin bread" from Beth's Basic Bread Book by Beth Hensperger. I had already had an idea that I was going to have to try making walnut bread after reading about it in Nancy Silverton's Breads from the La Brea Bakery but realizing that raisins could be added clinched it. I really liked that it was a multigrain bread as well. This is right up my alley - especially for the fall! There's something about the cooler weather that calls for a stronger bigger tasting bread.

There was only one small hitch. My sister-in-law's recipe calls for commercial yeast. Nancy Silverton's recipe appears to be quite complex, requiring 3 days of preparation! (I do like her book but it really doesn't seem to be aimed at the kind of home baker I am. It's all I can manage to remember to mix the starter one day before baking! Same day bread is really more suited to my scattered temperament....) But again, I really wanted to use my wild yeast that I captured using the recipe in Piano Piano Pieno by Susan McKenna Grant.

So I winged it once more for how to make the alteration from commercial yeast to wild yeast. I'm still fighting a bit with how much to allow the bread to rise (I'm pretty sure that I am letting it over-rise) so the resulting bread was a little bit on the flat side. But still I was pretty pleased and I can really understand why it is my sister-in-law's favourite bread. I only wish she lived closer so I could take a loaf over to their house next time I bake this recipe!

By itself, the bread has a decided sour aroma - not overpoweringly so but I would like to lessen it. With sweet butter, the sourness disappears completely and the other hidden flavours of the bread stand out beautifully. There is a nuttiness not just from the walnuts and a sweetness not just from the raisins. It really is stellar bread and imagine how good it's going to be when I remember to turn the oven on early enough so it doesn't over-rise!

It is equally wonderful for dessert with cheese. And day-old bread can be sliced thinly, drizzled with olive oil and made into crostini. Slather the toasts with herbed olive-oiled goat's cheese. It's almost so good this way that I have an urge to make a loaf specifically to be kept over for a day just to make crostini!

Here is the Wild Bread with Walnuts and Raisins recipe.

About Baking the Bread: Thirty minutes before you are going to bake, turn the oven to 450F.

At the time of baking, spray the top of the risen loaves liberally with water.

Note that I do NOT throw water or spray the hot oven before putting the bread in to bake. This just lowers the temperature of the oven and could possibly damage parts of it. (I've heard of the glass door or the light breaking.)

Put the bread in oven and immediately turn the oven down to 400F. Bake the bread for a total of 40 to 50 minutes or until the internal temperature is between 210F and 220F. (I use a meat thermometer.) Half way through the baking, turn the bread around to account for uneven heat in the oven.

Remove to cool on a rack. Wait til the bread is cool before cutting it. It is still continuing to bake inside! If you wish to serve warm bread, reheat it after it has cooled completely.

To reheat unsliced bread, turn the oven to 500F for 5 minutes or so. Turn the oven OFF. Put the bread in the hot oven for ten minutes.

• larger views and more photos of walnut raisin bread
• Complete version of Wild Bread with Walnuts and Raisins (WBD 2007)
• recipes from OUR kitchen - bread index

Zorra (Kochtopf) is hosting World Bread Day (WBD) again this year and is inviting food bloggers to join with her in another celebration of bread. Any bread fits the theme: yeasted or not, plain or fancy, homebaked or storebought. The deadline for posting for WBD 2007 is Tuesday, 16th October 2006 (There is short grace period: only until Wednesday, 17 October 2007). For complete information on how to participate, please see:

• World Bread Day 2007 guidelines

Also, if you haven't already, do take a look at

• What is the World Bread Day?
• International Union of Bakers and Bakers-Confectioners - World Bread Day
• Kochtopf: World Bread Day 2006 - roundup
• Dangers of Bread

On a more serious note, please note that today is also World Food Day. Not too long ago, I talked about hunger. But it cannot be stressed enough that unlike us privileged few, there are many in the world who go hungry. Please remember to do what you can to end world hunger.

See more about World Food Day on Floydm's blog.

(edited to fix formatting... I'm having a devil of a time with "rich-text" -ejm)