Hybrid Whole Wheat Bread

I have always believed in the fact that the day you feel that you are a master of certain art, your growth stops there. It’s always good to keep trying and learning and be ready to experiment. The moment you start your sourdough journey, you will realise that you will need to be at your creative best to make innovative use of your discard. How many times would one bake discard crackers or pancakes? So, the idea was to use it in as

many recipes as you can 🙂 My family used to be scared to try any dish thinking if I would have added some discard into it. Well coming back to the recipe…. I guess the pictures talk about the texture, isn’t it?

If you follow my blog, you would have seen my other recipes of 100% whole wheat bread. I have one using the autolyse method, the tangzhong method, using boiled potato, the Hokkaido bread, using a preferment and many more. I found this bread to be extremely soft, moist and didn’t dry out or spoil after 3 days. A small amount as little as 50 grams of discard (which we generally throw away) can create such a big difference, magical isn’t it? Maybe the flour too had a role to play. I have used Math and Keith un bromated and unbleached flour from wildpep.com. These are available on Flipkart. As always, the cup used is 240 ml. So, without much ado let’s jump to the ingredients list and procedure. Please do share your comments here or you can mail me at pradeepa.nair0@gmail.com

I would love to hear about your experience and your feedback means a lot to me.

Ingredients:

For the preferment:

• Whole wheat flour 100 gm
• Water 100 gm
• Sourdough discard 50 gm

For the dough:

• Entire preferment (250 gm)
• Whole wheat flour 450 gm
• Salt to taste
• Sugar 2 tbsp
• Milk powder 2 tbsp
• Instant yeast 1/4-1/2 tsp
• Milk 240 ml (1 cup)
• Oil 2-3 tbsp
• Water 60-80 ml (1/4-1/3 cup)

Method:

To make the levain/preferment:

• Mix 100 grams of whole wheat flour and 100 grams of water to 50 grams of discard and mix well.
• Keep it aside in a warm place till it’s double in volume. It might take 2 hours or more depending on your starter. Mine is only six days old, but it doubled in around three hours.

To make the dough:

• Take half cup of lukewarm milk in a large mixing bowl and add the entire levain to it. Mix it well.

• To this, now add sugar, milk powder and instant yeast.

• Add around 450 grams of whole wheat flour and mix with a wooden ladle or spatula.

• Add salt and lukewarm water slowly and mix till you do not see any dry flour patch.
• Transfer the dough onto a clean kitchen counter or a silicon mat and start kneading using the stretch and fold method.

• The dough will be sticky to begin with. Make sure that your dough is moist enough.
• You can wet your hands lightly while kneading.
• Add oil little by little and knead for around ten to twelve minutes.
• Transfer the dough onto a well oiled bowl and allow it to rise till ita double in volume.

• Now, shift the dough onto a cleaned kitchen counter or silicon mat and punch out the gases slowly.
• Roll it into a rectangle and fold it.

• Now roll it tightly into a log and pinch the edges well and seal it completely.

• Place the rolled dough in a well greased bread tin. I have used 9x4x4 inches Pullman loaf tin.

• Spray some water and allow the dough to rise an inch above the pan.
• You can make some slashes or cuts with a sharp knife or blade. Sprinkle black and white sesame seeds if desired.
• Towards the last ten minutes of proofing, preheat the oven at 220-240 degree Celsius for 10-12 minutes.
• You can place a tin containing water in the oven for a steaming affect.
• Place the bread tin in the oven and bake for 10-12 minutes at the set temperature.

• Now, reduce the temperature to 190-200 and bake for another 40-45 minutes till the top looks nice and golden or the internal temperature of the bread is around 95-100 degree Celsius. If the top gets browned too soon, tent it with aluminium foil or parchment paper or cover lightly with a lid.
• Remove the tin from the oven, place the tin on a wire rack and cool for 3-4 minutes. If your tin is well seasoned, you can transfer the bread onto the rack immediately. If your tin is new, you can even line your tin with parchment paper.
• Transfer the loaf onto a wire rack and cool completely.
• You can brush the crust with some melted butter. This will make the crust softer.
• Cover the loaf with a moist towel while it’s cooling.
• Slice only after 3-4 hours. Enjoy with a dab of butter or make yummy sandwiches of your choice.