Category Archives: whole wheat bread

100% Wheat and Rye Bread, another success!

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I’ve been on a bread making binge lately, the cold weather was conducive to hanging out inside and running the oven. I got 5 lb bags of hard red wheat and rye berries, and ground those into flour using the same superfine feed rate setting. Based on the last results, I decided to use double the salt (counters the bland taste) and then let each type rise twice before the punchdown and final rise.  Here’s the loaves:

Wheat

YES!!! I finally got the desired rise, it was perfect and didn’t collapse.  I used small loaf pans, that may help (they are about 1/2 size in all dimensions, and dark for best browning). You can see the nice light structure, it made a big difference to get the second rise and slow down the process. I originally thought one rise for the whole grains, but that seems to lead to the top collapsing.  On to the rye…

Rye

I milled my own flour versus using stale, coarse rye from the store.  The store flour seems to be used to make “rye-taste” bread, with lots of white flour for the rise.  It doesn’t work at all for bread IMO. This rye dough was pretty thin at first, it’s too sticky for a bread machine unless you had something that was round and a rubber paddle to pick up all the dough. And there’s be no point in kneading it extensively as there’s no gluten.  I used the same mini pans, lots of water and salt, with two risings. The rises took over 3 hours (total time), but it was worth the wait.

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They rose picture-perfect, then sagged a bit in the oven (grrrrr). But, as you can see from the interior it has a nice shaggy texture and not too dense. A couple of notes on the 100% rye:

  • The interior is gummy when first baked. You want to let the loaves cool and sit a day before eating it, it’s good but needs that time to develop the texture. I’ve seen references to this elsewhere, seems odd but that’s the rye I suppose.
  • The flavor is stronger than wheat, not bad but you probably have to like Rye Krisp to enjoy it. It mellows with time, I bag my bread in the fridge and that seems to work well to develop the taste. I make toast in the mornings with my experiments, and have been savoring the rye, more so than the wheat.

 

Wheat Bread Victory

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Hooray, I finally made a loaf of 100% wheat bread that was tasty and everyone chowed down on. The trick was (as I mentioned earlier) to use whole berries, grind them as fine as the machine will go, use 50% more water than recipes call for, and bake at 400 vs 350.

Exhibit A

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Nice crumb, hard crust, not dense. The white load behind it is from a bread machine, it’s like candy and the family eats it up as soon as it comes out of the machine.

The next big thing will be to try sourdough, in a crisis yeast will not be available so it’s a must. It is said the sourdough yeast works a lot better in whole wheat than the packaged variety, and you can make a firmer loaf that self supports (boule). I have the starter direction, will give that a whirl over the next few weeks.

Wheat Pancakes

I had a cup of flour left over from bread making, so I made whole wheat pancakes.  They were very good, my wife and son loved them but D2 wee’d on them. Figures, she hates anything whole grain.  They look and prepare the same as Bisquick versions, they have a little more of a wheat flavor but otherwise taste great. I didn’t know how the hard wheat would work in self-rising goods, turns out pretty well. I have the soft wheat berries but haven’t done anything with it, I’m not planning on that sort of refinement in my wheat farming.

Stay tuned for Operation Sourdough, that’s in the pipeline.