Making bread from whole grains

[acdean]

I'm very new to breadmaking and have attemped to make whole wheat bread using whole wheat berries (hard red winter berries to be precise).

I'm having problems getting the bread to become more lighter and fluffier. Like I said, I'm sure the answer is simple for those with more experience than myself, but I would sure appreciate any tips out there to help me make my loafs a bit more fluffy.

Here's what I've been doing:

I grind the berries to flour consistency using a miller, add about 1 tsp of salt, and then add the yeast mixture (active dry yeast and warm water and 1 tablespoon of brown sugar - making sure the mixture sits for about 5-10 minutes to form). Form the dough, let it sit for about 1/2 hour and then bake in the loaf pan for about 45 min at 350 degrees.

The bread itself is ok, I just wish the texture would be lighter.

Is there something that I am missing? I heard that the temperature of the water is using active dry yeast should not go below 100, but I'm mainly being testing the temperature by feel rather than thermometer. Can this be a cause?

[siduri]

hi acdean,
if you want to get so serious about whole grain breadmaking i really recommend the book for the whole wheat fanatic, by a whole wheat fanatic (I mean that i the positive sense) the laurel's kitchen bread book.
She has researched and tested the way to make whole wheat bread be light and rise and be perfect. Even has recommendations on making your own flour etc. It has just too many suggestions for me to describe, buy the book. But i outline some of them in my reply to the post "making yeast breads lighter" in this same forum.
I make very light 100% whole wheat bread now, and it always comes out good.

[pastryphish]

so lets get something said off the bat. if u make a bread recipe with 100 % whole wheat (thats bakers percentage) ur gonna have a heavy bread naturally. whole wheat flour is one heavier and has less gluten than traditional white flour (this means less structure to hold in gases). if u want a lighter yet whole wheaty bread i suggest playing with your percentage of flour. start out drastic and work backwards til ur happy.

example if u use 5# whole wheat flour

next time try 2.5 # organic white flour and 2.5 whole wheat. this will change the properties consistency and times very possibly but if u pay attention it should work out fine. take notes to remember those differences for the following time.

[acdean]

siduri and pastryphish,

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll try the thing about proportioning the whole wheat and white flour and see how that works. Someone recently suggested the same thing so maybe I'll give it a go.

Siduri,

Will check out the thread that you mentioned. When you refer to your own light whole wheat breads, do you grind the berries yourself?

Thanks.

[stir it up]

acdean, that's probably the easiest way to do it, if that works for you. If you're going for white get unbleached IMO. (I also look for organic and UNbromated, but that's me). If you can find hard bread flour great, if you can't all purpose will do OK, or if you can find gluten flour you can add a little gluten flour to all purpose to amend the all purpose gluten content to be closer to bread flour. I'd also look for more recipes and follow one exactly, look for some with a longer rise.

Kneading is important to bring out the gluten. A wetter bread also works wonders. Artisan bread bakers will generally use a much wetter dough than most home bakers are accustomed to.

If you want to get more deeply into it than that, or for the Pro baker, Peter Reinhart (who is famous for the books Crust and Crumb, and The Breadbaker's Apprentice) has just recently come out with a book on Whole Grain Breads. (Whole Grain Breads: New Techniques Extraordinary Flavor) I have only just gotten into it, but it seems like an A-1 book, extremely well developed (he used 350 recipe testers!), and really worked at developing techniques for success with whole grains. His whole first chapter discusses the challenges when going from baking white loaves to whole grain, and getting a good rise, nice crumb, etc. He gets into it at the food chemistry level, enzymes and so on, and has worked with some of the masters and developed his own philosophy on a delayed fermentation method. Now be warned many of the recipes and techniques will involve pre-ferments, bigas, natural starters, soakers, etc... so if you're up to making it a project to really figure it out and want to stay 100% whole grain and breadbaking is important to you, it would be worth checking out this book.

I haven't seen the Laurel Kitchen one, I'll have to look into that one too.

I'm sure the answer is simple for those with more experience than myself

ROFLMBO, because the more you know, it only gets more complex, not simple at all!! You'll see what I mean if you check out books by some bread artisans. Right now there's almost no room to move in my home kitchen from all these different natural yeast starters I have around...

Speaking of yeast, you could also try using SAF brand yeast. Many think it provides a better result.

[siduri]

Originally Posted by pastryphish

so lets get something said off the bat. if u make a bread recipe with 100 % whole wheat (thats bakers percentage) ur gonna have a heavy bread naturally.

Hi pastryphish,
I can tell you, because i DO IT ALL THE TIME, that it is NOT true that whole wheat bread has to be anything more than unnoticeably heavier than white bread. This is simply because people have forgotten how to do it.
Yeah, it will be a slight bit denser, but if you are careful and follow the right directions you will be able to make it without any white flour at all.
They also say bread with butter in it is going to be heavy and dense. Not true either, and butter can actually make it much lighter, if done right. See the comments on the thread "a lighter yeast bread" in this forum.

(Also, i wonder, did you read the post i did just before yours? If you had, at least you could have said "in my opinion" or "I don;t agree with siduri" or even "what siduri said is a crock" which would at least show you read it - it's very annoying to write something and it's not even acknowledged. Happens a lot in the forums. Sorry, this is one of my pet peeves.)