Proteolytic dough? Fresh-milled flour using the Peter Rinehart formulas
Hi all, I'm a quite new baker trying to learn to bake using 100% ww flour milled in a Mockmill. I've been using the Peter Rinehart whole wheat book with not a lot of success... most loaves taste good but are very dense.
Recently I made a simple whole wheat bread from the Laurel's Kitchen bread book (pictures in my blog onTFL) and it was a revelation....as in 'OH! So THATS what dough is supposed to be like! That's what silky means! That's what windowpane looks like! That's what proofed dough that has good gluten development looks like!'
So that was cool.
Then to compare I went back and made another simple whole wheat loaf from the Rinehart book. And yep, again it's terrible. The final dough is wet, sticky, stringy, clotted, overly tough/springy, not at all extensible, and with no gluten sheet. This is using a 24 hour refrigerated biga combined with an 8-hour-countertop-followed-by-16-hours-refrigerated soaker.
I decided to be stubborn and just keep trying to develop the gluten. I added an extra few tablespoons of flour and started a program of machine kneading, 4 minutes on, 10 minutes off. Eventually, after about an hour and a half, the dough actually developed to the point where there was a decent looking windowpane. After that, it went fine. The shaped loaves seemed very nicely proofed, and the bread has decent crust and crumb.
I just don't understand, though. Why did the Rinehart dough, which was supposed tho finish kneading in 5 minutes, take 1.5 hours to knead? Is it something to do with the fresh milled flour? Should I abandon the room-temp soaker and just put it straight in the fridge? Does anyone have any ideas? I like making the pre-doughs in the evening and baking the next day, but these formulas are not working as expected for me.
First, congrats on getting the mockmill, I hope you like the taste of the fresh milled flour, I think it is the best. Second, I have the whole grains book and used it , and did not have the problems you describe. OTOH, when I first got the book, I was using conventional yeast, not sourdough starter, and since I have switched to a starter, I haven't used his biga - soaker method much, if at all. My recollection was that I got fairly good development of gluten, though not a window pane, just during the resting phase, and I know I did not knead it for 1 1/2 hours- probably more like 10 minutes. I am not familiar with Laurel Kitchen book, so don't know why those results would be so different.
I had loaves like you describe, when I first started. Have only put about 24kg of wheat through my Komo mill. But things got a lot betters soon as I started my second bag of wheat. The wheat was from the same store, same brand, but it made bread making more enjoyable.
I would suggest you try wheat from another store, another brand, to see if there is improvement. I am not getting loaves as high as white store bought flour, but a lot better than the first bag.
Just keep having fun.
Bill.
Thanks for the responses, guys! I am very much enjoying the Mockmill. I appreciate the info re other experiences with the Rinehart book using fresh milled flour. It didn't occur to me that the wheat might be an issue, but looking back, the one successful bake I had out of this book was using half Kamut!
Maybe this particular hard red winter wheat just doesn't like such a long autolize/retard. I will experiment with adding kamut into the bakes and see how it does.