I adore bread! I love making it, different types of loaves, and all the different incarnations one can make with the dough. Mmmm.
Anyone who has baked bread has at one time or another had an epic fail. (see photo at left.) We usually refer to the end product as a BRICK. Many bricks have occurred in the Reeder kitchen over the years as I've tried to make 100% whole wheat loaves. More than once that has happened because the baker simply forgot some key ingredient, like the yeast. Or, like the other day, I added too much liquid and the dough rose WAY too much and overflowed and made for a yeasty industrial spill that took over an hour to clean up properly.
But I've persevered. Obviously professional bakers can make a really decent product, we've all had great whole wheat bread, it's doable.
I have a bread machine to make the experimenting much easier. I LOVE this machine. You put in your ingredients late at night, punch a few buttons and set the timer for when you want it ready in the morning, and VOILA'! You can wake to the wonderful smell of freshly baked bread wafting up from the kitchen. Or your dough is ready to roll out for some hot cinnamon rolls. (There is nothing magical about how it does this, it simply saves you kneading time, it does it for you.)
So I have been trying for quite some time to make wheat bread or rolls that were light and tasty, not dense and leaden. (We've had great success with half ww flour and half white flour, but thus far the true whole wheat products have produced only so-so results.)
Well, on Wednesday, Nov 16, 2011, I DID IT! I found a combination that created rolls SO GOOD, I literally drove around the neighborhood, sharing with friends. The world needed to know this could be accomplished! Well, my fellow bread lovers, anyway. They tolerated my exuberance with kindly pats on the shoulder, "That's nice, Robin."
So here's my recipe.
1.5 cups each white wheat and red whole wheat flours (I grind these myself)
1 heaping Tab gluten and 1 tsp or so of Dough enhancer
(these two are critical to this accomplishment, I believe)
about 1 tsp salt, 2 Tab butter (oil if you want)
1 egg; about 1.5 Tab honey (could be more if you want)
1/2 cup each milk and water. I put a little honey in the cup, added the liquid and warmed in the micro. Then I put in 1 Tab of yeast and stirred. This awakens the yeast and jumpstarts the process.
I also added a tiny more yeast to the machine. Then I added another ounce of water, too.
I let the yeast warm in the milk a few minutes, then poured it over the flour in the machine.
I put the machine on Whole Wheat (a setting that is an hour longer - I think it kneads it longer and also lets it rest more.) About 3 hours later the dough had risen to a perfect mounded loaf. I punched it down and made rolls out of it and let them rise in a warm oven for an hour or so.
I baked them at 350 for 17 minutes (the bagettes were done) turned off the oven and left the other rolls a few minutes more. Then when I pulled them out, I put a little butter over their tops and covered with a towel.
They were tender, light, tasty... I was in heaven, I tell ya! I made a big pot of Minestrone for dinner to go along with them.
Now, don't get me wrong, I think white bread it the ultimate treat. And we will still have the half and half kind, not everyone wants a whole wheat bread. But it's good to know it CAN be done.
Cross that one off my bucket list.
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