An experiment in 100% whole wheat sourdough bread
I love the taste of whole wheat bread, and hardly ever make any bread with white flour only. My recipes can have anything between 1/4 to 1/2 whole wheat four, the rest being mostly all-purpose white flour and often a small amount of rye as well. I have been pursuing the "holy grail" of 100% whole wheat for some time, but until yesterday it seemed whenever I got past the 50% limit, the result was always closer to brick than bread. Doing some research to identify the causes of my failures, I came up with the following probable culprits:
- The bran particles which can cut through the gluten strands, causing damage to the structure of the dough
- The low quality/low protein content of Brazilian flour
- Improper methods to deal with the peculiarities of whole wheat flour
As to #1, I must add that the four I'm using is said to be stone ground, and is not particularly fine.
Since there's little I can do about #1 and #2, I started to look for ways to improve the gluten development. I decided to do a really long autolyse, but at the same time I did not want to autolyse all of the flour for fear of ruining the texture of the crumb (based on results from my previous attempts with this method). So here's what I did:
Ingredients:
- 300g stone-ground whole wheat flour
- 230g water
- 60g whole wheat starter at 100% hydration
- 2/3 teaspoon salt (~3.3g)
- 1/2 table spoon olive oil (actually a little less)
---
8:30 AM
- Prepare starter 1:2:2 from 100% mother starter
- Mix 200g water + 150g flour, put in to fridge
7:30 PM
- Start bringing autolysed flour to room temp: place bowl with flour into a larger bowl with warmish water, stir every now and then
8:00 PM
- Add in 50g flour, mix/stir vigorously for 3 to 5 minutes (I actually used a bamboo chopstick!!! :) )
- Incorporate the starter, oil, salt, 30g water, 100g flour
- Let it rest for 30 min
- 4 gentle stretch & folds every 30 min
11:20 PM
- One more s&f + shaping
11:45 PM
- Into fridge
7:30 PM next day
- Out of fridge
9:00 PM
- Score
- Spray with water
- Into pre-heated Dutch oven
Taste was great, though some (not me) might find it a bit too sour. Had decent oven-spring considering my previous trials. Wish the crumb was a bit more open, but it's ok and not too dense. This has been my first 100% whole wheat bread which didn't end up in the bin!
What do you think? What could I try changing for my next loaf to get a more open crumb with the same ingredients? Concerning the sourness, the only thing I may change is using a younger starter, but if it were just for me, I'd personally rather keep it this way.
Some photos:
wholegrain loaf, but yours looks great!
I also use really long overnight autolyse, and then take the dough out of the fridge 2 hours before mixing the rest of the ingredients in, I prefer the feel of the dough this way. I autolyse all the flour, but i've never done it with 100% wholegrain.
I usually leave my dough out at room temp for an hour or so after shaping, putting it in the basket and covering. Then i put it in the fridge. That's helped me get a more open crumb. Or you could try to let the dough warm up a bit before baking?
Anyway, well done, you loaf looks really really good!
Good point. The problem here is that I get home after 7PM and usually go to bet at midnight, so it would be hard fo me to extend bulk fermentation or to leave the dough at room temperature after shaping. I did let the dough out of fridge for 1:30h before baking, and I could certainly wait a bit longer next time. Thanks!
When you were doing the S&F, did the dough raise and get pretty airy? The crumb looks like it needed to rise a bit more with the bulk fermentation.
Hydration- With my WW, the dough should start out by feeling slightly sticky-a bit might stick to your finger with a firm poke. The by morning, it will feel just tacky and the finger will come away with no dough stuck to it. THat is ideal texture on my dough. Make sure you have adequate water for that.
All the flour should be hydrated with water and time and you are doing that with the long,cold soaking (an overnight cold retard). If some of the branny bits are not hydrated, these bits will suck the moisture out of the crumb after a bake and you will end up with whole wheat crumbles! That is why you soak ALL of the flour, in some fashion.
Going back to the starter. I wonder if your starter is active enough. Do you do 1-3 feedings the days before you use it for bread? Does it rise vigorously with the feeding? A preferment (equal parts flour,water and a tablespoon or so of starter mixed and left overnight at 80F)
Since you are doing a long, cold retard, you can do a preferment, cold retard and then drop the autolyze. This may really activate your yeast and allow a long soak for the branny bits and be the best solution for you. Or do it all and have a really well hydrated loaf.
Nice loaf, regardless.
I thought so. It's really difficult for me to extend bulk fermentation as I can only play with breadmaking at night after work. I usually have 4~4:30h to do that before going to bed.
I will try and increase hydration for my next "experiment".
The reason I did not soak all of the flour was that last time I did that the crumb turned out with a strange texture and look, a bit like plastic foam. But then I autolysed it out of the fridge and for some 10 hours (between my going to work and getting back home). Maybe I could try an all-flour autolyse in the fridge next time. Does that make sense?
Another option which I remember reading somewhere might be doing an overnight soaking/autolyse out of fridge but with salt added. The salt would supposedly act the same as the fridge in retarding the enzymes action. I want to try that sometime, with all four for the recipe.
It sure was! More than doubled, and quite bubbly.
Will take note of that too. Of course, there's no point in trying to change it all at once, as want to get the feel of how changing a variable affects the end result (that's why I called this an "experiment" :) ).
effects of the bran cutting the gluten strands. I sift out the bran and feed that to a small amount of starter to make the levain for the bread over 12 hours and then retard the levain for 12 - 36 hours in the fridge. This does 2 things. The bran is wet the longest to soften it and the acid in the levain works to break it down so its gluten cutting ability is reduced dramatically. The bran also acts as a buffer allowing the LAB to reproduce at lower pH's than normal and make more acid making for a more sour bread that can stand up to the powerful flavors of a whole grain bread without getting lost. The extra acid also strengthens the gluten strands making for a bread that can rise to more lofty heights than normal. It makes for a better bread all the way around.
You can then autolyse the high extraction, branless, sifted flour for the autolyse. We love 100% whole grain breads and they can be quite majestic.
Happy baking
That's an interesting idea as well, I had never thought of doing that. Would have to find a sieve with a very fine mesh. As to the extra sourness, as I said, it came out already pleasantly sour, but I wouldn't go any farther in that direction.
Yes, 100% whole grain is great, and now that I got something as good as that, I'll have to try it again next week, with some of the suggestions to get a slightly more open crumb. For my taste, that would satisfy me completely!
MarcosC, first of all congratulation for this bread.
Many times I am baking this kind of bread for my grandchildren and 100% whole wheat is always a challenge. This year my daughter got gold award for such bread (78.83 points out of 80 possible) on state level bread evaluation. I have attached the picture of the bread that you can compare the crumb (the bread on the picture is a miche made from 1000g of flour what is the evaluation proposition). The second picture is the same type of bread baked in wood fired oven where the oven spring was much better. So enough about it.
I got inspiration for my adjusted recipe on ThePerfectLoaf.
Below is the recipe, but I will start with the description.
Since I have to make a miche from 1000g of wheat I just mill 1000g of grain and then sift out the bran. In my case the bran was 135g, flour 865g, so it was 86,5% extraction flour (or high extraction flour as I call for in the recipe).
After cooling down the flour I prepare soaker from bran at 130% hydration with boiling water and then just cover it and leave it on warm place.
I prepare the levain from my starter (starter is not included in the recipe) and mix the rest of flour and water with desired dough temperature 27dC to start prolongated autolyse.
When the levain is ready (I always use young levain which means that when it starts to raise for about 5-10%) -usually it takes about 3-4 hours, I add levain to the dough, and short after the salt and well mix it by hand (I don't use mixer). Then I do stretch & folds every 30 minutes and one hour into bulk fermentation I add the soaker together with 50g of water which helps to incorporate soaked bran in the dough. As this is WW dough it ferments faster so usually bulk ferment completes within 3 hours, then preshape (no dough dividing as I make just one big miche), 30 minute bench rest, final proof for about 1 - 1,5 hours until it is about 85% proofed and then to the oven.
I don't ferment bran as I don't want to add sourness, especially for the bread evaluation. But you can try and you can then compensate that with some baking soda.
Hydration: I am aiming towards 90% but it completely depends on the grains I can get so in this case 87,5% was the maximum I could achieve and have good aesthetic result.
So there is a lot of possibilities for further improvement. You got excellent advice from other members worth to test. Here I would like to point out that you can try making this bread with two levains - one SD and other one with yeast water which nicely opens the crumb.
Well done and happy baking Marco!
This miche was baked in wood fired oven and had perfect oven spring.
Congratulations to your daughter on the well-deserved gold award! That's a beautiful loaf, and I bet it was delicious too! Thanks for the detailed information and the link to the 100% ww sourdough bread recipe. You've been the second person to suggest sifting out the bran and reincorporating it at a later stage, though differently from dabrownman, you didn't use the bran to feed the starter. Lots of ideas to try, so it looks like I'll be busy for a while experimenting with the different possibilities. To be honest, the first thing I will try for my next baking is including all of the flour in the soaking instead of just 50%. From all the possible "wrongs" in my last loaf, this is the the one thing everyone who commented seems to agree. I don't think my result is too far off from what I want from whole grain bread, so one small adjustment at a time! :) Will keep you posted on my improvements.
Thanks everyone!
Marcos