Hello everybody!
I am writing here for the first time in order to achieve a big goal of mine which is to bake a 80% Hydration Wholegrain bread.
I am living in Spain currently and we normally do not use Bread flour here to bake, only in certain regions, but commonly we use a 10gr protein flour like All purpose. Tradition here also shows sitff loafs rather than open crumb ones, normally the are around 65% hydration and quite dense.
I am trying to combine a high percentage of Wholegrain ( wheat, spelt, rye, kamut...) let´s say around 80% and also 80% Hydration, my point is that I have tried but I do not get the right point of fermentation yet, it doesn´t rise as I wish and I am here to listen some of your advices, I want it to spring nicely and full of holes.
If anyone could share any experience on this with me I would apreciate it.
Thanks in advance!
Happy Baking!
Hi Chefazo,
Other people may have other experiences but in my (very limited) experience, using soft wheats for high-hydration whole grain bread just did not work at all. However, I have seen people make beautiful high-hydration breads from 100% hard whole wheat.
I would suggest starting with 100% of the strongest whole wheat flour you can get your hands on. No rye, no spelt, no kamut. Using that flour alone, develop your technique for working with high-hydration dough. Once you are consistently getting the results you want, you can experiment with adding in small amounts of other flours, and see how far you can push it before the dough collapses under the weight of the water.
Here is a video to show you how the dough should look and behave:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcEzgWwQQjc