I made bread with cooked wheat berries. The ones that made their way to the crust totally dried out and became so hard that you could break your teeth trying to chew them. Any one knows how to avoid this problem?
Hi Dan! Sorry to hear about the crunchy berries. It looks like a very nice loaf though. I think you might have better luck if you use cracked grains instead of whole ones. There's a nice recipe on this forum here:http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/56283/cracked-grain-porridge-sourdough-bread. You might be able to find some guidance within that recipe. I also make a WW seeded loaf that includes oat groats, and I make sure to pour boiling hot water over the seed/oat mixture and let it cool to room temp before I mix it in the dough. I've seen some recipes call for an overnight soak, which might help as well. Good luck!
you can flick off the ones on the crust, if you like the effect of the internal ones.
pretty sure I’ve seen this in a published recipe - flicking was easier than keeping out a scrap to make a groat-less coat for the loaf, etc. And it saves your teeth.
I have done that picking-them-off method and I still ended up with too many hard seeds just under the crust, plus all the little pockmarks where I removed seeds. Not pleasing.
I think cracked grain is the way to go, cooked until very soft (sort of mushy). Or if you have a flaker, that would be best of all.
Another thought is: I almost always laminate as a late-stage tension-building step, so I have thought about but not tried the idea of dividing the dough in half after the first mix, adding the cooked grain to one of the two doughs, proceeding with the regular bulk rise and then stretch and folds or whatever, and then laminate with the two dough stacked on top of one another with the plain dough on the bottom, so it ends up on the outside.
Laminating like that, you wouldn’t need to crack or cook the whole berries, would you? Wheat berries inside a loaf are always soft enough for my teeth.
I've never put cooked whole hard-wheat berries in bread, just soaked or cooked cracked wheat in the dough.
But I have prepared boiled whole hard-wheat berries as a side dish.
Unless I gave them at least a 12 hour pre soak, it took forever to cook them tender. Without a pre-soak, I don't remember them splitting open during boiling.
Pre-soaking, and then boiling, they eventually split open and bloomed. That might be the way to make the ones on the outside crust more crunchy-light instead of hard-dense.
Another possibility might be to use soft wheat berries instead of hard wheat, but I've never tried that.
Hi Dan! Sorry to hear about the crunchy berries. It looks like a very nice loaf though. I think you might have better luck if you use cracked grains instead of whole ones. There's a nice recipe on this forum here:http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/56283/cracked-grain-porridge-sourdough-bread. You might be able to find some guidance within that recipe. I also make a WW seeded loaf that includes oat groats, and I make sure to pour boiling hot water over the seed/oat mixture and let it cool to room temp before I mix it in the dough. I've seen some recipes call for an overnight soak, which might help as well. Good luck!
you can flick off the ones on the crust, if you like the effect of the internal ones.
pretty sure I’ve seen this in a published recipe - flicking was easier than keeping out a scrap to make a groat-less coat for the loaf, etc. And it saves your teeth.
I have done that picking-them-off method and I still ended up with too many hard seeds just under the crust, plus all the little pockmarks where I removed seeds. Not pleasing.
I think cracked grain is the way to go, cooked until very soft (sort of mushy). Or if you have a flaker, that would be best of all.
Another thought is: I almost always laminate as a late-stage tension-building step, so I have thought about but not tried the idea of dividing the dough in half after the first mix, adding the cooked grain to one of the two doughs, proceeding with the regular bulk rise and then stretch and folds or whatever, and then laminate with the two dough stacked on top of one another with the plain dough on the bottom, so it ends up on the outside.
Laminating like that, you wouldn’t need to crack or cook the whole berries, would you? Wheat berries inside a loaf are always soft enough for my teeth.
I've never put cooked whole hard-wheat berries in bread, just soaked or cooked cracked wheat in the dough.
But I have prepared boiled whole hard-wheat berries as a side dish.
Unless I gave them at least a 12 hour pre soak, it took forever to cook them tender. Without a pre-soak, I don't remember them splitting open during boiling.
Pre-soaking, and then boiling, they eventually split open and bloomed. That might be the way to make the ones on the outside crust more crunchy-light instead of hard-dense.
Another possibility might be to use soft wheat berries instead of hard wheat, but I've never tried that.