Hello everyone!
I use to make whole grain bread at home, it's tasty and all but I don't really like how dense the crumbs comes out.
I would like to make a more airy and alveolar bread but I can't find a good recipe to follow. I usually use whole grain flour with 13g of proteins and fresh brewer's yest activated with some honey, 70% hydration. I do all the kneading by hand as I don't have a breadmaker or a planetary machine.
Can you help me out?
Thanks!
but you'll need to develop the dough by hand to match what a machine achieves in this formula:
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/71297/20221020-simple-100-wholewheat-bread-clas
Yippee
To get an airier crumb, you can try increasing the hydration a few percent at a time and see if that helps. To me, the biggest impact is degree of development in Bulk Fermentation and the same for final proof. I get the airiest crumb in my 100% home milled whole wheat when I allow it to double in size during BF, and then in FP , get it so that it is almost overproofed - I don't get much oven spring that way, but definitely more open crumb. YMMV, depending on your flour and process.
Thanks for your answer! So you're suggesting of letting it rest more? Like how long?
What made my wholemeal bread airier and softer and with more open crumb was doing an overnight autolyse with salt with the bulk ferment flour and water while my sourdough preferment was getting going before mixing the two together in the morning. This helps the bran get fully hydrated and the loaf keeps moist and soft.
If using commercial yeast you can do the same using a yeast preferment.
That's really interesting! Are you using 100% of the water for autolysis or you add some more the morning after?
For the autolyse I use all the flour and water not used in the preferment plus the salt for the full loaf. I have found that I might need to add a little more water when mixing the final dough as it is a little drier than if not using the autolyse.
Perfect, thanks a lot. I'd definitely try this!
There will be two main factors that determine how much volume you get in your bread. First is proper gluten development, and second is proper fermentation. In whole wheat breads, proper gluten development is not as straightforward to achieve as it is in white breads. If you're not getting enough gluten development, the things to try (as some have already stated) are:
Once you have a good gluten matrix, you also need to let it proof long enough to achieve the desired volume, but whole wheat doughs are a lot easier to overproof in my experience, so be careful as they might collapse on you.