I have a single goal in bread making and that is to make a good, doesn't have to be perfect, 100% whole wheat sourdough. I've tried 4 or 5 times with subpar results.
Little back story, I was watching the mini series "Cooked" on Netflix, awesome show, it has a 60 minute episode dedicated to bread, the significance of bread on cultures, the history of bread, the industrialization of wheat, etc.. after watching the show ended up buying a kitchen aid grain mill and started a starter, with the goal of making a whole wheat sourdough.
First, I don't want to use store bought whole wheat flour, I want the whole berry, germ, bran, fats and all. What I understand, correct me if I'm wrong, is that the only way to get true whole wheat flour is to purchase it freshly milled or mill it yourself, this is because the fats in the berries turn rancid fairly quickly. Recepies online show a 50/50 split of whole wheat to white flour for sourdough and I cant seem to find any only whole wheat recepies.
Second, I want to use only my home propagated yeast and bacteria. I have experience with homebrewing and working with cultures, so my starter is pretty strong.
Below is what I have done and all of my breads are turning out way to dense. As a test I've used all the same steps and times, side by side, with king arthurs bread flour and the bread became overproofed (I let it overproof on purpose just to see the difference).
Wheat- I've tried hard white and hard red berries (can't remember if they were winter or spring), because my understanding is they have more gluten. I milled the wheat fine and ran it through a fine sifter to catch any hulls.
Made a leven and there seemed to be good activity, did the float test and it floated.
I let it sit in the autolyse for 4 hours, longer then I would usually do, but I though the extra time was needed to get the sugars out of the whole wheat, also the additional time would allow the gluten to get ready.
I folded the bread over, instead of knead, every 30 mins for 2.5 hours.
I then let the dough proof in a proving basket in the refrigerator over night, probably a total of 9 hours.
Prior to cooking I scored the dough. I cooked the bread in a Dutch oven for 20 mins at 500, lowered it to 450 for 10 mins. Uncovered the bread and baked for another 30 - 40 mins.
What I beleive I noticed, is that the bread did good up until the bake and never really got that final rise in the oven. I didn't get the feeling that the yeast had crapped out, but that may have happened, maybe there was insufficient sugar. Overall the bread is 1.5 to 2 times denser than I would like it.
Any help would be much appreciated. Again I only have the two requirements, 100% freshly ground wheat and only a sourdough starter, no domesticated yeast.
Thanks for the help.
Submitted June 03, 2016 at 11:49AM by pincheciguena http://ift.tt/1O7deYa Breadit
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