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?   

HBin5's 10grain recipe as an 8-grain with turmeric

HBin5's 10grain recipe as an 8-grain with turmeric

I was just using up this dough, that still contained papaya seeds.  I used a longer basket here, just to use up the dough in a single loaf.

I've always wanted to try adding some turmeric to the interior of a bread.  That was the only plan here.

I sprinkled a bit of ginger in the flour that coated the couche, and you know what?  That is actually the best part.  I think that next time I want a gingery crust like this, I will mix the ginger and the flour completely, and use it liberally to line the couche. 

I love the colour of turmeric, and of course, it is just so good for you. I flattened out the dough gently with my fingers and sprinkled lots on before rolling up the dough and placing it in the basket to proof for 90 minutes.

I also tossed a bit of dill on what became the bottom of the loaf, but this really got lost in the process.

The loaf turned out fine, sagging a bit, but it worked as a stone-baked artisan loaf with 3 slashes.

I think that the golden colour of the turmeric interior is amazing.  Although, it does seem to me as though the colour fades somewhat as the loaf is exposed to air.

Notes to Myself

• What if you add the turmeric to the dough itself?
• Add the ginger to the flour that you will line the couche with; or better yet, roll the dough in flour mixed with ginger before proofing.
• What other spices would work here?