Honey Wheat bread

Ever tried to make a loaf of whole wheat bread? Came out as heavy as a brick, didn’t it? Probably about as chewy as one, too. You didn't do anything wrong. The problem is with your ingredients. There’s a workaround here, and it involves two kinds of flours, and a special kind of starter.

It's not delicious looking, is it?

That starter in question is called a biga (BEE-guh) and it’s nothing more than whole wheat flour and water. Why are we doing this?

If you look at whole wheat flour under a microscope, you’ll see the particles have sharp edges. Those sharp edges prohibit gluten formation. Gluten, if you didn’t already know, is the protein that’s responsible for the curvature of millions of spines and the devaluation of the American dollar in international markets.

Ok, no it’s not. But’s it’s sure a hot topic of discussion, isn’t it? I’m not attempting to start an argument here. While I do have a definite opinion on gluten, I’m not going to get into it here. All I’m going to say is, if there’s a solid reason for you to not eat gluten, then I’d stay away from this stuff.

Which is a shame, because it’s delicious. But, such is life. Go bone up on the stock recipe maybe?

Remember this stuff?

So, how do we dull the sharp edge of a whole wheat flour particle? By soaking it in water for twenty-four hours. The flour particles will absorb the water and puff up, which in turn rounds their sharp edges. That’s our biga. Simple, right?

How you make it: 1 ½ cups of whole wheat and 1 cup of cold water. Mix it up in a mixing bowl until it’s fully incorporated. Cover with plastic wrap and let it sit on the counter.

Twenty-four hours later it’s time to finish making our dough.

Ingredients:

1 ½ to two cups of AP flour. I prefer unbleached. More on that at the end.

2 ¼ teaspoons of active dry yeast. This is a misnomer. The yeast is completely dehydrated and not active yet, and it won’t be until you introduce water. So don’t panic when you see the next ingredient.

2 teaspoons of salt. You can put it right on top of the yeast and it won’t hurt anything. Unless you’re using fresh yeast. I recommend against it, though. We’ll cover that another day.

¼ cup of honey.

3 tablespoons of butter, chilled and cubed.

One egg

A cup of cold water. Maybe you’ll need this and maybe you won’t. Keep it handy anyway.

Go get your biga off the counter. Add all the ingredients right on top and start combining with a bowl scraper. You’ve probably seen one on TV. It looks like a plastic playing card.

There are many like it, but this one is mine. Well, this one and four others.

Combine everything with the card, scraping the sides of the bowl as you go. When the dough comes together, turn it out onto a floured work surface and start kneading. Do you know how to knead? I sure hope so.

If you don’t, I’d advise finding a YouTube video. Keep it simple. If you’re new to baking bread, trying to emulate, say, Paul Hollywood will only end in dejected tears.

Remember, keeping it simple is a good idea.

Knead for about ten minutes. You’ll feel the dough tighten up more and more as the gluten forms.

As you work you’ll find that this dough is sticky. That’s because of the butter and the egg. You’ll want to throw a little more bench flour down now and then as the flour sticks to your work surface. Just not too much at a time, your dough will absorb that flour as you work.

Once you’ve finished your kneading, place your dough ball into an oiled mixing bowl. Cover with a moist dish towel and let rise for about an hour, or until it doubles in size. Punch it down and cover again with that towel, which I assume you’re remoistened by now.

moist

What about a stand mixer? Everything in the mixing bowl, dry on the bottom, wet on top. Using the dough hook, mix on low for one minute. Then on medium to medium high for four. If the dough is clinging to the hook and not contacting the bowl, add some water, a teaspoon at a time, until it loosens up. Go slow, if you add too much too fast you’ll have to add a little more flour, also a teaspoon at a time. Give the water time to get in there.

Likewise, if your dough is not coming together and unappealingly lying on the bottom of the bowl being annoyed by the hook, you’ll need to add more flour, a teaspoon at a time, until it finally comes together.

It will, just be patient and make small adjustments.

Once your four minutes is up you can check your dough by administering the windowpane test. Pull a piece of the dough away from but not off of the ball and run your thumbs over it, gently stretching the bit of dough. If it gets so thin that you can see light through it without tearing, your dough is ready. If it’s not yet, give it thirty more seconds in the mixer and try again.

This is what you're looking for.

Turn your dough ball out into an oiled or sprayed bowl for rising, following the same instructions as before.

When you’ve finished your two rises, you’re ready to shape your dough.

On a lightly floured surface jab your dough with your fingers to get all the air bubbles out. Stretch your dough into a rectangular shape about the length of your bread pan. For this exercise I’m using two 8x4 pans, so my loaves will be medium sized. Just right for a small sandwich.

Because I couldn't find my full sized pan. I suspect a child had something to do with this.

Roll your dough rectangle toward yourself, making a tube. Once it’s rolled and ready, gently lower your dough into the pan with the seam in the dough at the bottom. Cover your dough with a piece of plastic wrap that you’ve put a little pan spray on, sprayed side down. Let rise until the top of the dough is about an inch above the top of the pan.

When you put your pan in the oven, you’re going to lose a little heat, so here’s a workaround trick. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees, Farenheit. When you put your pan in to start baking, reset your heat to 375. Bake for fifty minutes, turning your pan half way around at the halftime point. This is to ensure even baking.

“But, Fat Guy?”

“Um, my name’s Aaron.”

“It is? When did that happen?”

“I don’t know, when I was born probably.”

“Ok, well, Aaron, what if I have a bread machine?”

That’s easy. Also, for the record, I’m all for using machinery if it helps encourage you to make your own stuff. All you need to do is put your ingredients in the pan, dry stuff on the bottom, wet stuff on the top. You can mix, knead, and hold your dough in the machine and then pan it and bake in the oven.

I used to have one just like this. If I had the room, I'd still have one. The things are really handy.

If, on the other hand, you’re going to bake in your machine, set it to whole wheat, and let it do its work. Keep an eye on it for the first ten minutes or so. If the ingredients aren’t mixing well, or the dough ball is just spinning on the paddle without hitting the sides of the pan, I’d put some more water or flour in, a teaspoon at a time. If you have very limited space, are not confident in your abilities, or just don’t want to handle dough, the bread machine is a fine way to go. Once you get a stand mixer, though, the bread machine becomes kind of redundant. Says me.

So, we've baked. Let the bread sit in the pan for about five to ten minutes, then turn out onto a cooling rack and let stand until completely cool. We discussed the why of that move in last week's recipe, but in short, if you slice into a hot loaf of bread, you'll release the steam and cause the bread to dry out too quickly.

Parting thoughts.

Let’s talk about that unbleached flour. Bleached flour is just that – flour that has been treated with some kind of bleaching agent (sometimes actual bleach) to make it appear whiter and oxidize the wheat grains to aid in the forming of gluten. I prefer unbleached because I don’t want to have to deal with those bleaching agents. The flavors are the same, and the colors of the finished product seem to be a bit darker with unbleached. Unbleached, in my experience, also produces a somewhat chewier product.

If you want to use bleached and bromated flour, go right ahead! It won’t actually hurt you. Kinda like the gluten.

Probably.