Frustrated. Is it me, or is it the recipe?
When I got Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice, one of the first recipes I tried was the whole wheat sandwich bread. I used TAM 105 flour from Barton Springs Mill. The result was two very dense (but flavorful) loaves. Flustered, I looked up other whole wheat recipes from Reinhart and found this recipe, which is apparently from Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads, also with TAM 105. The results were much better. I made this recipe a few times with great success (pictures below). Yesterday I decided to try the BBA recipe again, but once again the results were squat, dense, disappointing. They barely crested above the top of my pans during the 2nd rise, but then collapsed in the oven (I think this means they were overproofed, yes?).
So I have some questions.
First, has anyone ever made the whole wheat bread from BBA and got good results? If so, what might I be doing wrong? Should I try a different flour? It seems to me that the amount of dough this recipe makes wouldn't be enough to fill two loaf pans but that's what the instructions call for.
For the record, I did use the optional oil and optional egg. The Whole Grain Breads recipe uses much less oil and no egg.
Anyway, I'd love to get some suggestions.
For reference, here's the bread I get from the Whole Grain Breads recipe:
And here's what I got from the BBA recipe.
My copy of the BBA is in storage so I can't check it, but here is Dave Snyder's variation of it, here on The Fresh Loaf:
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/22987/light-and-fluffy-100-whole-wheat-bread
It's probably worth reading through it and seeing if there's something helpful there.
Yes, collapsing in the oven would indicate a fairly overproofed dough. The number of pans wouldn't address denseness, but the collapse would. Also, that flour is listed as having an exceptionally high protein content, which suggests that it would soak up more water than more common (i.e., lower protein) WW flours would. If you didn't compensate with more water, it might contribute to a denser loaf.
But I haven't baked that recipe nor used that flour, so these are only thoughts that I hope may be helpful.
TomP
TomP
Interesting that just changing the mixing would make that much difference in the crumb. I'm just starting to learn about bread, but from what I understand, mixing helps to create gluten, thus improving the structure. More vigorous mixing = more gluten. But then this also makes me wonder why the results from the whole wheat bread in Whole Grain Breads are so good with the same amount of mixing as the original BBA whole wheat bread recipe. I'm mystified, and clearly I have much to learn.
I addressed the number of pans in the different recipes because the recipe from WGB uses 510g flour and makes one loaf. The recipe from BBA uses only 57 more grams of flour, but calls for dividing the dough to form two loaves. It makes sense that the loaves from the latter would be smaller of course, but not this small. I think both times I've made this recipe I overproofed, alas.
WWflour behaves a bit differently than AP flour in a few ways but once you figure that out, you can have soft,100% WW loaves. Not as marshmallowy as AP flour but very pleasantly soft and not crumbly.
1. WW flour needs excellent hydration AND THE TIME TO ABSORB IT. My dough usually feels sticky and wet (a finger touch may come away with a thin layer of dough on it) but give it an autolyse (30 min minimum) or an overnight retard and it becomes a slightly tacky feel (like a post-it note). This resting, hydrating time allows the branny bits to get waterlogged. If you don't do this before the bake, then after the bake the branny bits will absorb the moisture from the crumb and in a few hours you will have a slice of bread that crumbles in your hands.
2. WW dough needs to be mixed to windowpane. Yes-it can be done! It must be done! Even with 100% WW dough that is adequately hydrated and rested. This gives you the nice soft, flexible texture.
When I first saw the pics of the shorter loaves, I wondered if you had enough dough in the pan. You can still see the shaping lines, as if it did not expand tightly enough into the pan. The texture (without seeing the crumb) looks pretty nice. I use a fairly common size pan-8 1/2"x 4 1/2"x2 1/2" pan and the dough to fill the pan weighs out around 650-700g (depending on additives).
I hope this is helpful.
WW flour needs excellent hydration AND THE TIME TO ABSORB IT
One thing that can be useful here is to sift out some of the bran and use it in a soaker. This makes sure it's hydrated and adds some more flavor. If you use roller-milled WW flour (I know, not in this case), this can be even more useful because the bran may be in the form of a lot of very large flakes, which the mill added back to the whiter flour to make it "WW".
Both of Reinhart's recipes for 100% whole wheat bread that I've tried call for an overnight poolish / biga and overnight soaker, and both do pass the windowpane test after kneading (I was amazed at this the first time). I think (but I'm not positive) that the recipe in the 15th anniversary edition of BBA was developed after that in WGB, and since the WGB recipe gets such excellent results, I can't figure out why the BBA recipe is so underwhelming. There's got to be something else I'm doing wrong.
My reason for asking is that the recipe only has 4.5 cups of flour. That's a bit on the light side for the recommended 8x4 pans. It would make very low-profile loaves if baked in 9x5 pans.
My own impression is that the formula needs to be scaled up somewhat even if the 8x4 pans are used.
Paul
My pans are 4.5x8.5. Specifically these.
It's helpful to hear more experienced bakers than I verifying my hunch that this is not enough dough for two pans. I haven't made very many of Reinhart's recipes but he's so revered among breadmakers that I'm far more willing to question my own judgment.
I will say that Reinhart's recipes got tested by a lot of recipe testers, and they did get some adjustments based on the testers' remarks. I know because I was a tester for two of his books. Now it could happen that only a few testers were interested in trying a particular recipe, but generally a lot of testing went on. And BBA was already out before I did any testing myself (I tested for Whole Grains and Artisan Breads Everyday). Still, I would have thought that a big mismatch between dough size and pan size would have been caught.
TomP
What are your thoughts on ABE? I have ABI5MAD. That was my gateway book into breadmaking.
I have mixed feelings about Artisan Bread Everyday. That's mainly because I haven't made any of the recipes for a long time. Of course, you just have to love the cover photo! I think the recipes are pretty good for the most part, but as with most other bread books, I end up using ideas rather than reproducing the recipes. I ended up liking dough rather than batter for English muffins so I don't use the ABE method for them. Maybe I should revisit those English muffins; it's been a very long time.
Here's a little quote from Peter's reply to one of my testing notes, this one on French baguettes. I'm including it here to illustrate how Peter hopes that people will use his recipes as starting points rather than as be-all-and-end-all pronouncements:
TomP
Not everyone has a high opinion of BBA. Here's a long review of it on Amazon that has the sound of hard experience, as well as some useful information on how to approach bread-making.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1MTL3QJ6Z92G3/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1580082688
I waited until the next day (today) to slice open a loaf and here's what it looks like. To my not-very-experienced eye, this crumb seems to be okay. The bread feels tough, but 1) I definitely overproofed it and 2) by the time I checked the temperature of the bread it was about 205, well above the recommended 185-190. Perhaps if I had smaller pans and had not overproofed this would be better, but again, I'm just learning and appreciate the input if those of you with more experience.
Oops, your pic didn't make it into the post.
Comment edited to contain actual picture....
Hi Crobran,
I baked that bread today. I chose exactly the same pans as you used, so I could see what was going on.
This will be our bread for today's dinner. We already sampled a couple of slices and it's remarkable. Very good bread. Even though I screwed up in a couple of places, it still is an outstanding bread recipe from Peter Reinhart.
Loaves before proofing
Proofed
Baked
Its height relative to its pan's dimensions:
I baked the master formula, only wheat, salt, yeast, honey, and water. No milk or buttermilk, no oil, no egg, no sprinkles, no other optional grains. Although the soaker was wheat, it was farro kernels, I don't know specifically if it was spelt, emmer wheat or what. It is sold simply as farro here.
I soaked the kernels for 12 hours at room temperature.
Then chopped them for 20 sec in a food processor along with the soaking water to make a wet coarsely ground mass.
Added to it ripe poolish (it tripled in volume twice, once at room temp, then in the fridge again it rose from 300ml to 1L volume). The poolish fermented for 4 hours at room temperature, then for 8 hours refrigerated, then for 1 hour at room temperature again.
Poolish went into the food processor along with the remaining flour, salt, bloomed yeast (I used active dry), honey, and additional 115g of water, for my flour is very dry and rather strong. It's Canadian all-purpose whole wheat flour with about 13.5% protein in it.
And kneaded it all for 1 min 45 sec in a food processor.
It didn't have a good windowpane at all. But I let it be, Peter says nothing about windowpanning anyways and it worked just fine. This is how it looked when I tried to pull at it, barely the beginning stages of gluten development, thick and easily broken film of gluten.
Fermentation for 2 hours at room temperature. Proof for 1.5 hrs at room temperature. The dough was so tight and strong, its surface began to break and tear at the end of proofing, so I slashed it before baking.
It smelled very buttery-milky-creamy and delish when it baked and the slice was super tender with thin crispy crust. I baked these loaves for 45 min at 350F.
Overall formula for this bread: 80% whole wheat bread flour, 20% coarsely milled wheat, 1.6% salt, 2.1% fresh yeast, 7.5% honey, 80% water (again, my flour is dry and strong, needs more water than average. Peter's formula is 60% hydration, then he says to adjust dough consistency by adding more water as needed).
The baked loaves were a tiny bit heaver than 1 lb, Specifically, they were 470g each after baking.
I no not think that you are doing anything wrong . In bread, success hinges on three things: right ingredients and their temperatures, right method and right design.
Maybe that flour or that yeast or that dough's hydration were challenging, maybe the degree of kneading/gluten development, I do not know. The first thing to check out is the ingredients.
If you are relatively new to baking, it is safer to use flours from grocery stores, they are not as challenging as those high protein flours from unique wheat cultivars which I find to be a nightmare to work with. They require a few test bakes to understand their behavior in bread. But they are charming and their aromas and tastes are so beautiful.
So, your flour is probably too strong for this recipe and requires intense kneading to develop its gluten and at least two full rises and a lot of yeast to lift it. That is why you were successful with 8g of instant yeast per two 1 lb loaves than with 4g of yeast. 4 grams of yeast won't leaven it, the dough resists the gas pressure.
It was enough in my case. The pans that you used have 1.4L volume and there was about 1 kg of dough to fill them. 500g of dough per pan when it at least quadruples in volume will end being 2L of dough each, enough to fill the 1.4L pan and then rise a bit more after baking. If you want chewy heavy breads, then less water and smaller pans would be good. But for sandwich breads, softer dough and roomy pans are appropriate.
When you use more enriching ingredients, such as oil, egg or milk/buttermilk as Peter suggest for this recipe's variations, you would probably need more yeast, or at least need to rehydrate and activate your dry yeast in a spoon of warm water before adding it to the dough, or the bread will not rise on time.
I just checked the protein content of my flour. It's 16.7%. I'm new enough to bread making that I don't know how that ranks, though I think it's pretty high.
Since I've made this recipe twice and (I think) overproofed both times, how do I avoid that with two rises? I overproofed because I was looking for a doubling of size, but both times it took longer than the recipe recommends, and by the time it had actually doubled in volume, it was overproofed. The shaped loves never really filled my pans.
Thank you again for all of the details!
Crobran, America's Test Kitchen determined that Heckers/Ceresota is the best flour for home baked breads in America. King Arthur flour took second place. I baked with both and they are awesome in performance and flavor, especially Ceresota. KAF is no different from our Canadian spring wheat flour, like the one I used on this bread.
So, if your goal is to master bread, certain recipes, please choose one of these two extremely reliable flour brands, whole wheat and white.
You can use your current flour added in small addition to the main flour, or in soda breads baking, or in yeasted and sourdough recipes where you know that it works, from your experience.
I have no experience with that flour at all. I only know that good for bread flour can stand for hours at max volume without collapsing. It is called fermentation tolerance of flour. Your flour is not sold specifically as bread flour, it is sold as a certain cultivar of wheat, not treated to guarantee its performance in bread. Do you have its label (what's in it) and nutritional data?
If you see that your bread dough is not stretchy or does not rise in volume impressively when fermenting and proofing, you could try using pizza yeast with it. It is designed to make bread dough stretchy, expand better during proof and in the oven, and I use it when I meet flours that are too strong for bread baking (too much protein).
A pinch of vitamin C powder will improve your flour's ability to rise to the max many times after deflating it.
Otherwise, you would have to adjust your formula and method to your flour. More yeast and different yeast, higher hydration, different mixing methods, etc.
In my case, the bread dough tripled in volume in 2 hours at room temperature (DDT 80F/27C, room temperature 72-73F/22-23C). Then I deflated it, shaped it, and it tripled in volume again during proof and then rose about 30% more during bake. I actually like brick like whole grain breads, like German pumpernickel, or chewy breads like bagels, but today I specifically wanted tender crumb and thin, crackly crust, so I added more water.
With water as indicated by Peter in this recipe, the dough was stiff, good maybe only for Montreal style bagels, and it would barely rise in volume 25-50% during fermentation and proof. Maybe your dough consistency was so stiff, that dried yeast cells did not rehydrate properly and that is why it rose so slowly and so little. In that case, rehydrating dry yeast separately in a small amount of 105-110F water before adding it to flour would help.
What is your room temperature? Peter indicates that on average he means 70-73F/21-23 degrees C when he recommends all ingredients to be at room T.
Thank you Mariana for the detailed explanation and process! I will try the grain soak and chopping to add to dough. The crumb looks so good and with tender crusts too. Have you baked this in one of your Zojirushis?
Good morning, Jo_en!
I haven't baked them in my Zojirushis, because I wanted to do the same as the other person, including baking them in the regular oven, to compare results.
I am not sure at what temperature my Zojis bake bread and how to translate 45-60 min bake in a preheated regular oven at 350F to Zoji's timing of baking at its own temperature, at what point to stop proofing loaves for the 'cold start' baking in a Zoji, etc.
So I baked both loaves at the same time which I regretted later (for practical reasons). This being essentially a copy of French baguettes method (2% yeast, little to no gluten development, 2 hrs bulk at 21-23C, 1.5hrs proof at 21-23C), makes bread that is best eaten fresh, warm from the oven or at least within the first 4-12 hours of baking it.
By the next day it was just a regular whole wheat bread, nothing to write home about. Not as stale as a one day old baguette, but not melting in your mouth good with heavenly aromas either. So I refreshed the second loaf by re-baking it in my Zo Virtuoso in its original pan for 30 min. This measure restored its crispy crust and creamy tender crumb right away.
The grain soak is a bit tricky, so I have to warn you about its two essential aspects.
SAFETY FIRST. The surface of the kernels is full of bacteria and mold spores and SD bacteria and SD yeasts are in minority, as you know. By soaking them at room temperature in plain water, we risk spontaneous fermentation of the grain with stinky aromas and lots of undesirable in bread microflora growing fast - molds, fecal bacteria, etc. Which is OK and maybe even necessary if we soak the grain for a sourdough starter from scratch, they will die out eventually, but not OK for using that grain in bread.
So, if we want to soak kernels of wheat, rye, oats, barley, corn for bread, we have to wash the grain first and acidify the soak next. SD microbes do not fear sourness, but all undesirable ones do.
One suggestion that Peter makes is to soak coarsely milled flour in buttermilk. We could possibly do that with kernels as well, but I wanted to try the basic version of this bread first and chose to add to my soak 1 small teaspoon of active sourdough starter (5g of 150% hydration starter). It did not make the water acidic right away, but by the 12th hour mark it became distinctly and sharply acidic (due to the temperature of the soak being so low, about 70-75F, the sourdough bacteria produced mostly acetic acid). Its surface became foamy, due to SD yeasts being active as well.
Since that is not a sourdough bread, but purely yeasted bread, I did not want to introduce more acidity or more yeast with the soak to the bread. So, I drained the soaking liquid, added the equivalent amount of clean water to the grains, and then proceeded to wet mill it all in my food processor.
BAKING PERFORMANCE. Peter's recipe mentions only coarsely milled flours in his soak and he recommends to soak them for 12-24 hours at room temperature then for up to 3 days refrigerated. I think his goal is to simply rehydrate those large particles of the meal or schrot, I do not know exactly how they perform later in bread. But the whole kernels will actually begin to germinate when soaked. This process is invisible, not many kernels will actually begin to sprout by that time, but germinate they will.
They will become fully hydrated by the 18 hours mark and will have to be refrigerated, frozen or used right away or they will spoil the bread, because the enzymes will begin to affect gluten and starches too much. So, these will be germinated but not sprouted kernels at the peak of their baking performance, and they will be choke full of vitamins and enzymes, and they will make bread super aromatic and with distinctly colored crust, a beautiful shade of shiny-golden-reddish brown.
So, unless you want to modify your main bread flour in your bread, if it is too strong, being rye or wheat, please do not soak those kernels for longer than 18 hours. Up to 24 hours at 70-75F maybe OK for Peter's epoxy soak, but too much for the whole kernels. OK?
Unfamiliar with the recipe but suspicious of the addition of egg, especially with ww flour.