An Everyday Bread: WW bread from ABin5

The Whole Wheat Bread from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day

Here's a bread that I come back to from time to time, just for the ease of it.  Last time I made it was with ginger, and some dried peppers.

The bread does contain some honey, so it is fairly sweet, but it works up fast.  It fit into my schedule this week.  I knew that I'd need a bread today, since I was down to crusts, and I wouldn't have time to properly bake a Tartine-style loaf using wild yeast. 

The dynamic duo that author the '5 Minutes a Day' books gave us this whole wheat bread in their first book, and I actually like it better than most of the breads that I've tried in the second book, which mostly contain vital wheat gluten.

I stirred up the dough last night and it sat in the fridge until morning after rising at room temperature about 2 1/2 hours.

misshapen

the loaf remains in the cooling oven

I baked it at a lower temperature

Today I was making some Sourdough Discard Whole Wheat Apple Cinnamon Muffins, using the recipe from 'The Baking Barrister', and made this loaf at the same time.  I didn't let the loaf rise in the tin any length of time, just took it from the fridge, formed the loaf, put it in the tin and right into the oven, at the muffin temperatures, which is kind of low for this recipe (350 degrees).  It baked for the first 20 minutes under another, overturned tin, and then 20 minutes more with the lid off.  Then I took it from the tin and turned off the oven, leaving the bread in a cooling oven until I could return, about 7 hours later.

I didn't expect the bread to rise much, I was rather expecting the crumb to be dense.  And certainly it is, but that's okay for a sandwich bread: it holds the butter and tomatoes just fine.  For a quickly made bread, its okay.

More about the Muffins

I'm always on the lookout for good sourdough discard muffin recipes.

These were a failure (no doubt my fault, not the fault of the original recipe).  My sourdough was likely a bit wet.  The recipe calls for 100% wild yeast discard, and mine was just mixed up ad lib, Tartine-style.  And my backyard-chicken-laid egg might have been a trifle large.

The original recipe, and the weights I found as I made it:

• 3/4 c sourdough discards 200g
• 1 c ww flour 148g  - I think I would increase this to perhaps 175g next time
• 1/2 c sugar 103g  - I think I would decrease this to 50g next time
• 1 tsp baking powder 3g
• 1 tsp baking soda 5g
• 3 Tbsp cinnamon 9g
• 1 egg 63g - a smaller egg would be okay here, since the mixture was a bit wet
• 2 tsp vanilla 11g
• 1/4 c oil 52g  - I would back this off to about 30g next time
• 1 large apple, peeled, cored, cubed 106g  - use some sour apples, even dried apples
• Topping: 3 Tbsp brown sugar 42g
• 1 tsp cinnamon

The muffins flowed too much, but they did show some promise.  They did appear to be rising a bit as I spooned them into the tins.  But they didn't mushroom up over the top of the muffin tins like a muffin is supposed to.  Instead, they spilled out onto the floor of our new, used oven, causing quite a lot of smoke.

But they taste okay -- if a bit too sweet for my liking.  There is a lot of sugar in them.

Here's another bread from the batch.  This one sat for 1 1/2 hours after being shaped, then baked for 50 minutes at 350 degrees.

Notes to Myself

• As for the muffins: 
• cut way back on the oil, next time.
• Use less sugar.  More whole wheat flour.
• Use a sour apple.  Would your dried apples work here?
• As for the bread:
• Of course, if there is time, let it proof in the tin at least until it comes to the top of the tin
• Try this with no honey, some time.

ABin5 Whole Wheat Bread with Purple Basil and Sunflower Seeds

ABin5 Whole Wheat Bread with Purple Basil and Sunflower Seeds

This is the same dough as last time, just a couple days later.  It is amazing the different tastes you can get by just changing a couple of ingredients or the method of baking.  The other day I used ginger on the crust; this time I used some purple basil and sunflower seeds in the interior of the loaf, rolling it up tightly.  This herb bread is pure experiment.

What made me hit on this combination?  I just opened the cupboard and looked.  The purple basil was sitting there.  We had grown it in our garden last year, lots of it, and now we had lots of it dried and ready to use.  There were a few sunflower seeds that I could toss into the loaf too, and I thought that it might give the loaf a nice crunchy texture.

On Basil in Bread
The wiki on basil indicates that the plant has been around for some time.  This purple variety (not the African Blue variety, some other kind) is probably more ornamental than culinary, likely a modern hybrid rather than the original.  Basil is used fresh more often than dried, where it loses much of its flavour.  It would appear that the plant has many healthful benefits (antioxidant, anticancer, antiviral, and antimicrobial), but also a few possible dangers (e.g. contains estragole, a known carcinogen and teratogen, probably acceptable in small amounts)-- much like bread itself, I suppose.  Of particular interest to me (given my job and my interests) I found the following lines in the wiki, which may one day be edited out because there is no citation given:

In Europe, basil is placed in the hands of the dead to ensure a safe journey. In India, they place it in the mouth of the dying to ensure they reach God. The ancient Egyptians and ancient Greeks believed it would open the gates of heaven for a person passing on.

So it might kill me, or it might lead me to God Realization.

I tossed it on the flattened dough, rolled it up and set it to rise for 90 minutes.

I baked it in a casserole dish, and let it bake about 5 minutes longer than I usually do (20min cover on, 25min cover off).  It is unfortunate that the casserole dish I used was slightly too small, and so the loaf became a bit misshapen.  But it still tastes fine.

By baking it about 5 minutes longer than usual, the crust became chunkier, darker, and harder, with a more distinct carmelized flavour.  I cut into the loaf while it was still hot (I barely had it made in time before I had to leave for work, and I needed to take some with me), and the scent of the herbs was really strong on the escaping steam.   This subsided a bit over the next day, but you can still smell the basil when you bring it close to your nose (which you have to do, to eat it).

This bread tastes quite different from the ginger crust version.  And yet, it is the same basic dough.  The basil provides more scent than substance; and only a hint of colour.  The sunflower seeds worked nicely with this dough.

I like both loaves.

Notes to Myself

• I used 1/4c each of the purple basil and sunflower seeds.  I also had a bit of flour to help with rolling up the dough.  I would re-think the use of flour for this purpose next time, or the amount I used: in the final bread, there are a few places where the white flour is still noticeable. 
• Try adding a fine spice to any flour you might use in this way, or use the fine spice in place of the flour.  What would you use, other than the ginger you've already tried?  Imagine paprika, or even cayenne.  What about mustard?  What seeds or nuts would complement these spices in a loaf?

Artisan Breads in 5 Minutes a Day 100% Whole Wheat Bread with Ginger crust and dried Peppers

Artisan Breads in 5 Minutes a Day 100% Whole Wheat Bread 
with Ginger crust and dried Peppers

Long before they wrote "Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day", the "5min/day" authors (Hertzberg & Francois) wrote the book "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day", in which they did include a 100% Whole Wheat Bread.  In HBin5, the authors seemed particularly enamoured with Vital Wheat Gluten, which they added to most of their breads.  But in ABin5, they didn't: and so, this much simpler, enriched, no-knead bread still exists for those of us who are looking for quick and easy, but healthier, whole grain loaves, without all that added gluten.


Day 1

 A nice rise after a couple of hours

Enriched with honey, oil and milk, this bread tastes good on its own.  But today I wanted to try my latest thought (building on the last bread I made), which is to include some ginger on the crust.  Actually, I sprinkled lots of ginger-laced flour all over the place when I was making this, inside and out.  I also decided to put some dried green and red peppers and dried mushrooms on the rolled up interior of this loaf.

I probably should have measured the ingredients of flour and ginger that I rolled my dough in, but alas, I didn't.  Let's just say that I just used lots.  Perhaps 3/4 cup of flour, and perhaps 1/4 cup of ginger; what does that weigh?  Who knows?


The other ingredients weights that I used are given here, in case I want to figure out the baker's percentages and play with this a little.

• 376g lukewarm water
• 379g lukewarm milk
• 21g granulated yeast
• 11g kosher salt
• 150g honey
• 53g olive oil
• 1013g whole wheat flour

If you just count the water and milk, there is 755g of hydration (a 75% hydration dough); but I think that the honey and oil should be added to this amount too, so the total is rather 958g.  That means that this dough is effectively 95% hydration.  That's a pretty sloppy dough to work with.  One certainly doesn't get the nice gluten cloak that the video on shaping has, even with his rye bread.  Furthermore, the high bran content in this bread wrecks havoc on the formation of gluten, so it tears very easily.  If I hadn't sprinkled the extra gingered flour on the loaf, it probably wouldn't have been nearly so tight as it was.

These no-knead breads are so labor intensive (not), it makes one tired just thinking about it

Day 2

As for the peppers and mushrooms: I had these dried ingredients sitting around in jars close at hand. I had been experimenting with my excalibur dehydrator, and these bits and pieces of dried veggies I didn't have a recipe for.  I thought I'd incorporate them into this bread.  I probably could have put more on the dough when I was rolling it up.  I didn't measure or weigh them either.


I rolled up the dough using the technique featured in this new-to-me video.  Frankly, I didn't think it would work on these no-knead 100% whole wheat breads -- and it certainly doesn't look as neat as the video tells it -- but it works, to make a tighter loaf.  As I rolled it up, I added more gingered flour on all the surfaces.

When the gingered loaf is baking, it smells great.  But the strange thing is -- and this I didn't expect -- when it came out of the oven it smells more like sweet peppers than ginger.

I could barely wait an hour before cutting into it.  It was still warm when I tried it.

Very nice.

 You can see the odd piece of dried sweet pepper sticking out of the crumb.  Not that many, though.

Notes to Myself

• What if you don't include all that extra honey and oil?  What if you just have water, or water and milk?  The authors of this recipe seem to think that whole wheat on its own requires something to take away the bitterness of the bread: do you believe that?  What else besides simple carbohydrates (sugars) would do this?  Could you add more seeds, more nuts, more dried vegetables?  Which ones?
• The gingery crust does taste great, to my tastebuds.  But what other spices might also be nice?   

Everyday Bread #1

I began my bread-baking monomania following a Mother Earth News magazine article about making bread in 5 minutes a Day. I read the article while on vacation, tried it when I got home, and then bought the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, by Hertzberg and Francois. Baking bread was so easy, it started me on my quest. I figured if I could make bread this easily, I could eventually make one that I actually liked. Because frankly, I felt that something was missing from these 'artisan breads' made with the no-knead methods.

I began to cast about for other bread recipes, and discovered that I liked heavier breads with more bran, and more whole grains in them. Unfortunately, my early attempts at these breads were inedible for my wife. I baked a lot of bricks. I needed to find a way to get the bread to become more airy.

Eagerly I awaited Hertzberg & Francois' second book, 'Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day'. This book had a lot of new recipes that used whole grains. But most recipes also used Vital Wheat Gluten, and even with this additive, I was unimpressed with many of the breads, both for their taste and their structure.

I was still searching. I discovered that many online bakers at the various web sites that I frequented were following Peter Reinhart's book 'The Bread Baker's Apprentice'. I did purchase that book, but I only made a couple of breads from it, surely not enough to master his techniques, and not even enough to develop a refinement of my taste. I can't say that I preferred his bread over the five minute a day breads. So, why make a bread that takes 2-3 days of effort when you can just stir it up and refrigerate the dough and make bread whenever you need to?

One thing I did, however, was follow Reinhart's roadmap to make a sourdough starter. I actually originally made 4 different starters! One was made with rye, one was made with all-purpose flour, one was made with whole-wheat flour, and I think the final one was made with a combination of rye and all-purpose flours. Eventually I tossed away all but the rye and the all-purpose mother starters. I still call these starters 'Barm' because that is what Reinhart called them in 'The Bread Baker's Apprentice'.

I too rarely used these starters, because the recipes called for a lot of preparation, which is difficult for me and my nursing schedule. I found myself returning frequently to the 'Five Minute a Day' breads, just to have something to take to work.

In fact, I mostly used these starters when I was discarding them! Loathe (and too cheap) to simply toss them into the compost when I was replenishing them, I was casting about for a way to use the throwaway part in bread, and found something on the '5 min/day' website. There, Hertzberg says that if you are using a 100% starter (i.e. an equal water:flour ratio as Reinhart's are), you can use 1 1/2 cups of that starter in the 5 min/day recipe(s) and simply cut out 3/4 cup of both the water and flour. You can also cut out some (maybe even all) of the yeast, but you may have to wait for varying lengths of time for the initial rise's doubling.

I first tried this with a discard, using their master artisan 5minday recipe:

2 1/4 c water
5 3/4 c flour
1 1/2 c barm discard
1 1/2 tbsp yeast
1 1/2 tbsp kosher salt

This made a decent tasting loaf, but it had a funny odor to it that wasn't all that appealing to me -- it could have been the high bacteria content of my expired barm, I don't know.

Tonight I'm doubling the amount of barm discard to 3 cups. That means the recipe is:

1 1/2 c water
5 c flour
3 c barm discard
1 1/2 tbsp yeast
1 1/2 tbsp kosher salt

To get this amount of discard, I actually had to dip into my active barm. Despite that, and despite the fact that I kept all the yeast, this dough took almost twice as long to rise as the first recipe; but then, the house is rather cold tonight, so maybe you can't compare. (Note: this bread was a disaster.  Since it was more goo than gluten, it wouldn't rise, and the baking was uneven.  I tried to make some baguettes and the goo was simply running all over the place in the 90 minutes after refrigeration and before baking as it warmed to room temperature.  In panic mode, I put it in the oven too early when the stone and the pan were not yet hot enough.  Although I slashed the loaves, they blew apart in the oven like popcorn, totally uncontrolled.  I ended up throwing most of it into the compost, even though some of it was a sourdough bread, and it had a decent taste and scent.   This is just one more in a long line of bread disasters that I have endured.  Maybe I should have called my blog 'Bread Disasters'.  But only an Exorphin Junkie would continue on trying to make bread in the face of so many awful bread fails and obvious lack of talent.)

But all this got me to thinking: if I could do this with the discard, how much better would it all taste (and smell!) if I did this with 100% active starter?

Reinhart no longer calls his wild yeast starters 'Barms'. He corrects the nomenclature in his next book, 'Whole Grain Breads', where he simply calls it a mother starter. I have just recently purchased this book, and tonight I am starting the master recipe from that book for the first time, using my 100% rye starter. If the mother starter works, I will be baking the first loaf tomorrow, since it takes two days to make a single loaf of bread. Will it be worth it?

I have it in the back of my mind that I might like to bake my way through his entire 'Whole Grain Breads' book (others have done this with his other book, 'The Bread Baker's Apprentice'. But this all depends on whether this initial test goes well.

I'm really hoping that I can find something that both my wife and I will like.

Notes to Myself:

• Use your refreshed motherstarter.  Don't wait until it is all worn out.
• Let the wild yeast fully rise your dough before baking
• Make sure the oven (and stone and water pan) are fully pre-heated, 30 minutes minimum.