I have been craving a good solid whole wheat bread recently and thought I should also do some sprouted grains as well. I picked up a copy of Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads and got to reading. Of course the book starts with background and food science and stories. I enjoyed the detail he goes into with the development of this book, the recipes, and the methods specific to whole grain bread baking.
Surprisingly the methods here are quite different than a normal sourdough or yeast based bread and in fact many of the breads in this book use a combination of pre-fermentation in the form of a starter or biga as well as using commercial yeast on the 2nd or 3rd day of baking.
My baking schedule was different than my normal routine but also not too difficult to deal with.
Thursday Night - Soak Wheat Kernels
Friday - Begin sprouting
Saturday - Prepare starter / Preferment - Continue Sprouting
Sunday - Mix Starter, Sprouted Wheat, and other ingredients including the commercial yeast and bake. I did this around 7am and the bread was out of the oven before noon.
Bakers Percentages found here.
Sprouted Wheat and then Ground in preparation for making the final dough (283g).
A very active whole wheat starter. This came from a seed of 100% rye starter that was fed once to make 64g at 100% and then a second time to make a full 397g at 75% hydration. This is only one half of the total dough. The method used by Reinhart is to create a portion that is pre-fermented (a starter or a biga) that is then mixed with other ingredients and commercial yeast in an "epoxy" method on the day of the bake.
Shaped and baked as a loaf in a pullman pan. Also baked at a lower temperature than I normally bake at but the instant read thermometer didn't lie. The bread was done.
The crumb was tight as expected. Also, and perhaps most importantly the bread is not gummy at all, which can be an issue with 100% whole grain. I wanted to cut into it right away but waited for breakfast on Monday. A bit of butter and a light toast and it's good. Looking forward to a sandwich later today with mozzarella, fresh tomato, and some avocado.
Sensei's Report Card:
Tasting Notes: The crumb is moist and has an almost buttery quality on the finish. The crust is presently firm with a nice chew. Not overly sour. Honey is not a strong flavor and does not appear present in the bread flavor profile.
Time / Effort: A little bit of pre-planning needed due to the time to sprout the grain. However, if this was a weekly bake it would fall into a routine very quickly. It is a multi day process bread, but as with all sourdough breads the extra time to grow the starter and develop flavors with extended or delayed fermentation is worth it to me.
Would I Make it again: Yes. Maybe a small increase in the salt and pull half of the sprouted grain before grinding to have some larger grains for texture.
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I can't see pics, perhaps load them into this site instead? So 397g was the total dough mass? The Foodgeek calculator shows a different number which seems confusing to me.
Strange that you’re having problems with photos in this thread and the other one of MTLoaf’s Ming. Is there an issue with your browser?
It could be my system, Benny, as I have a lot of protection software running in the background. Good to know you can see the pics, thanks.
I just checked on a series of other posts that I had not opened previously. All display photos - except this post.
Weird that you guys are having photo displaying issues. I have only run into that on really really old posts here on TFL.
I see one pic when I look at it from my phone, but nothing looking from the browser on my PC, glad to know I am not alone with this problem, thanks.
Hi Ming!
Thanks for the information about the images. Looks like the place I was hosting them was having an issue. I've uploaded them here and updated the post so hopefully you can see the images now.
As for the dough. The Final dough was around 858g. The 397g was just the starter that was used as a preferment. Reinhart uses a different method for making 100% whole wheat bread. It generally requires a pre-ferment (starter or a biga) that is then later mixed with other non-fermented ingredients and commercial yeast on the day of the bake which he calls his "epoxy" method. He spends a lot of time in the beginning of the book explaining the method and the reasoning behind it. The foodgeek calculator is not the actual recipe as baked but just the bakers percentages. If you wanted to use it as a guide you would simply choose to scale the recipe based on either total dough weight you want to target, or how much flour you want to use etc. That calculator is highly flexible for making adjustments or scaling recipes off of any ingredient or hydration.
I've also updated a little bit of the text in the post to clarify that confusion for other reader.
Thanks Steven for updating the pics and clarifying the recipe. The loaf looks great, good job with the bake.
By the way, for some reason, I think of Steven Seagal when I see your name :).
Beautiful loaf Steven, nice job with sprouting and grinding the wheat. I'm sure it was a delicious bread.
Benny
That toast looks lovely, and can almost imagine the feel of it in my mouth. Well done.
What jumped out for me is that the ground sprouts look quite different to what I have when I mince mine in the food processor. I get something more like a paste and if you roll the paste in your hands you can already feel that it is a bit like a bread dough. How are you mashing/mincing it? It is making me think that the coarse texture could be nice too.
-Jon
Hi Jon!
I ran it through in a small food processor. Lots of pulsing and some static blending. I intentionally was trying to have this texture because I wanted to have the more toothsome bite in the bread. Honestly, if I were to do it again I would either (A) grind 75% of the grain into a finer paste as you have done and leave the other 25% as whole sprouted grains...or (B) grind it all and then do an extra inclusion of sprouted grain for texture.
Overall the bread has been wonderful this week. I've been enjoying toast and jam with my breakfast coffee, but the best thing I did with it this week was to toast some...spread a thin layer of honey, and then top it with a slice of Havarti cheese. The sweet, salty, creamy, combination was a great pair with the hearty bread. That's a lot of -y adjectives!