whole wheat bread

Hi,

Today, I tried less yeast, 1/2 tsp disolved in room temperature water, first rise took 2.5 hours. I let it rise in the pan 55 minutes. So, less yeast makes it more manageable. However even though I put it in the oven before it rose fully, it still collapsed. The 4.5x8.5 pan was about 2/3 full when I put the loaf in to rise, and I put it in the oven (400 degrees) when the top of the loaf just rose above the edge of the pan. Should I try more flour/less water for a stiffer dough? Would adding egg whites help? Less oil? Any other suggestions?

I'm measuring the whole wheat flour by stirring it in the bag and then sprinkling it into the measuring cup to get ~4 oz by weight per cup. This is how I have read one should measure flour for white bread, is it the same for whole wheat flour?

Would the fact that I am not adding sweetener (sugar/honey) as the original recipe calls for be part of the problem?

Thanks

Is it winter where you are?

What's the consistency of the dough? How are you kneading it (hand? machine? how long? what technique?...) It may just be that your dough is too underdeveloped to support itself.

What's the weight of dough in that pan? Did you do the dimple test or just go by height?

Let's concentrate on technique first, formula second.

Yes, although it would be preferable to use a scale and weigh your ingredients.

Not significantly.

Dick Margulis wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news.supernews.com:

******************************************************** Dick,

Could this dough have risen too long? The salt would have extended rise, but he doesn't have any salt. I frequently let my doughs go 45 minutes with nornal salt and get good rise, oven spring, etc. I also don't go much over 2 hours for a normal bread in fermentation.

It strikes me that the dough could be exhausted. A first rise of 2 1/2 hours follored by a one hour final rise could be enough to kill the dough, espeically with no salt.

Barry

********************************************************

Barry,

Of course it's exhausted. What I'm trying to get at is the reason. How is he determining the length of the fermentation? That is, is he going by touch or by sight? I've given some specific advice and asked some specific questions, but so far I haven't seen answers to those questions. These doughs normally come very quickly, but if he's not kneading it enough in the first place and he's judging the fermentation visually instead of by touch, we're a long way from solving his problem.

Feel free to jump in anytime, though, especially if you've got a page with pictures that will help. (Nice job you're doing on the site, by the way; it has really come a long way.)

Dick

.....

It's summer. The amount of yeast is less than 1/4 of that called for in the recipe (2 1/4 tsp) I was trying to slow down the yeast because it was going too fast without salt. Yesterday I used 1 tsp disolved in 110 degree water and it still went very fast.

I kneaded 8 minutes by hand, as the original recipe called for, using the fold push turn method. I don't know how to describe the consistency of the dough - it was dough not batter, it was pliable after resting and stiffer after kneading. As I kneaded it, when I felt it was a bit sticky I would spread some flour on the board or the dough.

How should I be assessing the consistency of 100% whole wheat dough? What should I be looking for?

For the first rise I used the dimple test, for the second rise I went by height.

I'm trying to modify a recipe that includes sugar and salt to make a bread without sugar and salt. From my perspective, I don't have a formula so I think formula is worth giving some importance to.

If there are any existing recipies that use 100% whole wheat flour and no sugar or salt to make a loaf of bread I'd love to know about them.

My scale said my 3.5 cups weighted 15 ounces. (~4.3 oz per cup) I don't know if the scale is accurate or not. I don't have any standard weights to check it with.

Thanks

What is exhausted dough? Does exhaustion have to do with the gluten or the yeast? The dough was rising well in the pan. I cut down on the amount of yeast in the recipe because it was going very fast without salt.

Thanks

Yeah, but what was the temp of the dough water? Recall that I suggested you use COLD water, not room temp.

If you are using "active dry" yeast, you should mix it with a small amount of 110 F water before starting to add flour, etc. But the larger volume of water should be cold. If you are using "instant" yeast, you can add the yeast, dry, to the flour and skip the 110 F water altogether.

It's okay, in general, for dough to be a little tacky/sticky. With hand kneading, most people tend to add too much flour, which creates problems.

Because of the bran, whole wheat flour absorbs a lot more water, over a longer period, than white flour. So a dough that starts out feeling comfortably pliable can end up too dry. That doesn't seem to be your problem, though.

The dough should feel sort of springy, but it won't reach the level of elasticity that a white dough can achieve. The main thing you can actually measure is temperature. What is the temperature of the dough when you're done kneading? (With hand kneading, this will be very close to the same temperature it was when you started kneading, of course.) For a short-cycle straight dough, salt-free, you want the dough to be very close to 78 F--certainly not above 80 F. If it's a lot cooler, you can get a longer fermentation (better flavor), but you have to watch it like a hawk.

On the fermentation (first rise), did you take it on the young side as I suggested or did you let it go to full fermentation?

Again, what was the weight of the dough in the pan?

Do you have smaller pans?

And, again, use the dimple test for the loaf, as suggested earlier, not height in the pan.

The problem is that a salt-free dough is inherently weak and it ages rapidly. So if you try for full height, it's guaranteed to collapse.

I tend to like a sweeter whole wheat bread, so I don't have a formula you would like. That's not to say others won't.

That means you're doing an excellent job of fluffing the flour. For whole wheat flour, that's a good weight.

Exhaustion has to do with fermentation products. The yeast dies in its own waste, essentially. Salt tightens gluten and helps give structure to the dough. Without it, you have weaker gluten at the same time you have faster yeast metabolism. That's what I meant when I said you're working against nature.

When I worked in a commercial bakery, we made a salt-free whole wheat bread _occasionally_ (it was a product that went in the freezer and was only made again when there was none left--we couldn't sell it fast enough to offer it as fresh baked goods). It was always problematic--it tended to be poorly colored (pale gray rather than warm brown), poorly textured (uneven crumb, more open than we wanted it), and poorly shaped (rough top, swaybacked, and mushroomed over the pan walls). Sometimes a batch would collapse and we'd throw it out. We were not happy bakers when we saw salt-free bread on the order sheet. We used all the tricks I'm trying to tell you about, but it was still an iffy proposition every time.

Dick,

Carol Field has a recipe for Pane Toscano, Tuscan Saltless Bread, in her book, "The Italian Baker." I've always had great success with her book and her recipes work well for me.

Maybe he should try that recipe instead of tyring to modify an existing recipe, at least for the first effort.

The recipe calls for 205 grams white flour, and 475 grams of whole wheat, which I would view as whole wheat bread flour. (Whole Foods to the rescue!) It uses a starter (poolish, 2/3 cup water to 175 grams flour) and continues into the second day. First rise (fermentation) 1 hour, second rise 45 minutes to 75 minutes. AND, she posts it in weights, too.

I'd be glad to post the recipe if it'll help. If you think it will be a help, I'll make the bread and shoot some pictures.

As for the site, it had no place to go but up! But thanks for the compliment. You were a great help and inspiration, even if I did cuss you under my breath while I was struggling with the first iteration of CSS!

I'm straightening out a lot of things, getting the blog going, and just generally making things consistent among and between the sections. I've got an 85% bread that I just posted, but I don't know how it will be recieved. It's for a lot of dough. I had a lot of fun making it, and plan to use it as an example of how to scale a recipe up and down, but I don't know how many people will take one look at it and say "EEEEK! It's alive! It's Attacking The Counter! Run Billy Bob!" I'm hoping The King Of Glop will take a look at it and have a comment or two, both because I value his knowledge and because his posts are good reading.

This is the first creative bread I've made in a while -- just too difficult to be creative with bread in the summer. Pita's just about enough.

Barry

That seems a little light to me. I use 4.5 oz. for white flour per cup. Others use a little more than that. Since you think you have no accurate scale, why don't you just go for a pound of flour, is that possible? And then go from there. Dee Dee

"Dee Dee" wrote in news:f8ria6$pa$ snipped-for-privacy@registered.motzarella.org:

Well, one way to check the scale is to take a package of whatever, something that weighs about 2 pounds. Weigh that. Then remove the item from the package and weigh the packaging. Subtract the packaging weight from the total weight. This should equal the stated net weight on the package.

This won't be accurate to the grain, but it'll be close enough for bread work.

Oh, and don't use liquid and expect this to work as written above. A quart of water weighs about 33 3/8 ounces. Now that you know that little gem of a figure, you could use a quart of soda, water, beer, vodka, etc. (I'd be careful about milk, I don't know what milk weighs, what with the solids in there and all.)

Barry

I was faced with a similar problem when I found out that my digital scales were not weighing accurately - it proved to be an uneven surface on part of the counter top. Sets of weights were expensive so I googled the Canadian Mint and found that the Canadian dollar coin (the Looney) weighs 7 grams. Therefore, I periodically check mine with pocket change. Graham

Re: salt-free whole wheat bread, and kneeding whole wheat flour I use Braggs instead of salt for everything except sweets. It's made from soy, salt free but tastes salt. For sweets, I use Capra mineral whey powder. In breadmaking without salt, the dough moves along about twice as fast as when I use salt. For kneeding whole wheat, I keep adding water (instead of flour) many times during the kneeding process. The whole wheat dough dries out and gets hard unless I keep adding water--then I get a dough that is as soft and flexible as using white flour. Definitely let it rise twice before shaping into loaves.

L> Hi,

Have you looked at the sodium content on the Nutrition Facts on the label?

One tablespoon of Bragg's has 660mg sodium.

T of Kikkoman less sodium soy sauce has 575mg.http://www.peertrainer.com/DFcaloriecounterB.aspx?id=7104La Choy Lite has 550mg. Bragg's is FAR from "salt free." You have been deceived.

--Bryan

Bobo wrote on Sat, 11 Aug 2007 09:15:05 -0700:

BB> On Aug 11, 9:02 am, Hitachi bread machine user BB> wrote: ??>> Re: salt-free whole wheat bread, and kneeding whole wheat ??>> flour I use Braggs instead of salt for everything except ??>> sweets. It's made from soy, salt free but tastes salt.

BB> Have you looked at the sodium content on the Nutrition BB> Facts on the label?

BB> One tablespoon of Bragg's has 660mg sodium. BB>

BB> One T of Kikkoman less sodium soy sauce has 575mg. BB> BB> La Choy Lite has 550mg. BB> Bragg's is FAR from "salt free." You have been deceived.

What is "Bragg's" by the way? Is it also called Aminos and is a variant on soy sauce?

James Silverton Potomac, Maryland

E-mail, with obvious alterations: not.jim.silverton.at.verizon.not

Yes, and it does not taste bad. It just isn't low in sodium.

--Bryan

Hi,

For those interested I have an update on the no salt, no sweetener whole wheat bread...

I found that using king arthur white whole wheat flour works. White whole wheat flour is also whole wheat but it is made from a different strain of wheat so it is lighter in color. In the final recipe I used 2 tbsps of oil, and 1 tsp of yeast, 15 oz flour by weight, and 1/4 cup powdered milk, 1 1/3 cups water, no salt, no sweetener. Knead, form loaf, let rise in pan. Bake

40 minutes at 350 degrees. I assume two rises will work okay too, but haven't tried it yet.

I also found the 100% whole wheat flour works with these ingredients in no-knead recipes (using 1 1/2 cups water). It doesn't rise much in the oven but doesn't sink as it did when I tried the kneaded recipes. Mix the ingredients in a bowl, let rise. Mix again 25 strokes, transfer to pan , allow to rise, bake 47.5 minutes at 400 degrees.