shout out to Hamelman Whole Wheat with Multigrain Soaker

A quick shout out to Hamelman's Whole Wheat bread with Multigrain Soaker (p122 in second edition).

Hamelman has so many multigrains in his book it's hard to remember which is which.  This is the yeasted version of the 50/50 whole wheat with a pâte fermentée (35% fermented flour) and whopping 25% baker's hydration of slaked grains.

My wife said the bread was "bursting with flavor", which I think is the perfect description for how the grains were highlighted and exuded so much flavor and odor,  The texture was more dense than I'd expected, just a bit toward the moist cake like volkornbrot texture.

What I particularly liked about this bread was the complete absence of even the slightest hint of sourness nor even a hint of yeastiness. I'm used to natural yeast, and even in my desem there is a very slight lingering sour. Here it was just the pure grains shining through. The very small amount of IDY 0.4% and the salted preferments assure this feature, which I think is the loaf's defining feature.

Relatively minute changes to recipe:

• Trader Joe's all purpose for the white.
• left out honey by mistake, but didn't miss the sweetness.
• reserved an eighth of the salt in the final dough for the soaker, to prevent off odors (since it's 78F at night in Arizona)-
• used 50/50 whole wheat/white proportion for both the pâte fermentée and the final dough -- Highly recommend this as it not only predigests some of the whole wheat and adds to the flavor, but it also makes the scaling a lot simpler than the book without changing the overall formula
• substituted size#1 tabouli bulgur for the cracked wheat, used medium instead of course cornmeal, and used rolled oats.
• slapped and folded every 30m during bulk fermentation without kneading first.
• soaker made with less hydration, rest added to dough.
• Baked at 375F for longer, since wanted a sandwich loaf style.

Some comments about this dough:

• much slower gluten development than expected based on its sister recipes. i attribute this to the fact Hamelman mixes the soaker into the rest of he ingredients prior to mixing.  It's convenient but I think the grains might cut through the gluten
• much smaller proof and oven spring than expected. perhaps i underproofed the PF, since I used only a fifth of the suggested amount of IDY in the pate fermentée given Tucson nights are 79F at the moment..

But I don't think I'm going to change things, other than doubling the amount of dough to fit the pan, since the dense moist slightly cakey texture was a nice change of pace from more developed gluten, and suited the nuttiness' of the loaf.  The flavor was so bursting I don't want to do anything to mess that up!  But I might switch to more frequent folds.

Unfortunately, I misjudged the loaf pan so the loaf was half the height it needed to be. I plan on making again with  50% more dough so it has enough room to fill the whole pain.