Wholemeal Bread (aka Whole Wheat Bread)

We ran out of bread yesterday. I had a bunch of shifts to work but I decided to try my hand at fitting bread making into the schedule between shifts. In theory I was going to make the dough and set it to rise in the fridge overnight. In practice, I came back after my second shift and found the dough already trying to climb out of the bowl so I decided that maybe I'd knock it back right away and try to accelerate the second rise slightly so that it could go in the oven before I left for my overnight.

I followed the Edmonds recipe pretty closely. I had no idea what "Edmonds Surebake yeast" was, so I looked it up. It looks like it's some sort of mix of instant yeast, sugar, gluten, oil, and a few other odds and ends. The Edmonds website claims that you can substitute 1 Tbsp. of active dry yeast for 2 Tbsp. of Surebake yeast though, so I decided to try that. Given that we're now using a non-instant yeast though, I figured that I should probably switch things up a bit so that the yeast soaks in some sugar water before getting added to the flour rather than just dumping everything into a bowl and stirring the way you would if you were using instant yeast.

I dough was also very dry. I mixed it until it had mostly come together but didn't worry about trying to incorporate all of the flour. And I didn't flour the counter top at all. The dough was already much too tight and dry as it was. I actually ended up working in some extra water as I was kneading it. I think I added about 50mL of water. It probably could've done with even more though. Next time I'll just put more water in from the get-go. The recipe calls for 540mL. But, based on how things went this time, I'd be tempted to bump it all the way up to 650mL.

The other change I made was to add a bit of gluten flour (aka "vital wheat flour"). My understanding is that North American all-purpose flour is relatively hard, but still slightly softer than bread flour. And I'm not sure weather Edmonds wholemeal flour is made from hard or soft wheat. Given that I was potentially using softer flour than the recipe was expecting -- and given that I'm guessing a bit of extra gluten probably isn't a bad thing when it comes to bread -- I opted to replace 50g of the wholemeal/whole wheat flour with 50g of gluten flour. This probably isn't strictly necessary, but given that I had the gluten handy, I figured why not?

Wholemeal Bread

Slightly adapted from Edmonds Cookery Book (with a few pointers from the Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book)

Ingredients

• 250mL warm water
• 1 tsp. (5g) sugar
• 1 Tbsp. active dry yeast
• 550g whole wheat/wholemeal flour
• 50g gluten/vital wheat flour (optional)
• 250g all-purpose flour (or bread/hard/"high grade" flour)
• 17g salt
• 35mL canola (or other neutral) oil
• 400mL cool water

Directions

1. Combine the sugar and warm water and stir to dissolve.
2. Sprinkle yeast over the warm water mixture and set aside for 10 minutes.
3. While yeast is soaking, combine flours and salt and mix well.
4. Pour in yeast mixture, oil, and remaining water and mix until it comes together into a dough.
5. Turn out and knead vigorously for 10-15 minutes (depending on your kneading technique). Add as little flour as possible during kneading. Even if the dough seems a little sticky, just keep working it and it will likely become less sticky and more silky as the gluten develops.
6. Shape the dough into a ball, grease a large bowl, and press the dough into it. Then flip it over so the greased side is up.
7. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap (or place inside a large plastic bag) and set aside to rise. If proving at room temperature, it will probably take an hour or so. Alternatively, it can be placed in the fridge overnight¹.
8. Once dough is well-risen (usually about doubled in size), knock it back and divide it in half. Shape each half into a ball and smooth the top. (You're looking to stretch the gluten across the surface of the ball to give it a nice smooth top. Pull the slack to the bottom of the ball. It doesn't matter if the bottom ends up a bit puckered or wrinkled.) Set aside for 10 minutes.
9. After dough has rested, flatten each ball into a round (smooth side down). Fold each round into thirds to make a rectangle. Grab a short side and roll up the rectangle. Place each roll seam side down in a greased loaf tin.
10. Cover with a damp cloth and leave to rise for 45 minutes or so.
11. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.

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¹ I had initially intended to leave my dough to rise in the fridge overnight, but I used all warm water rather than a mixture of warm and cool. I think that caused it to rise very fast in that first hour or so in the fridge because when I checked on it a little bit later, it had sprung up and looked like it was trying to climb out of the bowl! ^Back