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Monday, November 24, 2014

Partly Whole Wheat No-Knead Bread

The world conspires to guilt white-bread eaters, so I've been trying to figure out a good proportion of white to whole wheat for No-Knead Bread.

I tried this one with 
356 grams high-gluten flour,
120 grams white whole-wheat flour.
A tiny bit of yeast (maybe 1/4 teaspoon) 
1.5 teaspoons salt.
336 grams of water.

This gets mixed together and covered (with a glass plate, in this case),
 and placed in a cool place over night,
and then into a warm room.
 When doubled, the oven was preheated to 425º with the corningware pot and lid preheating, too.

When heated, the bread was dumped into the hot pot and covered with the hot lid.

This strategy traps the moisture.
A "real" baker has a steam-injected oven.
Some folk put a pan of water in the oven to add moisture. Others spritz the oven and dough.  (I have heard of shattered oven windows, though, from the water hitting the hot glass, and I'm not ready to replace the oven!)  The heated, covered pot is so much easier.  You can use corningware, cast iron, a dutch oven.  It just needs to be heavy and have a good lid. (Make sure the knob on the lid can tolerate the heat.)

After a half-hour, the lid was removed for the last 15 minutes.

Total cooking time was 45 minutes.  
Bread was 200º when done.
Crust is crisp.  Crumb is chewy, but the holes are still smaller than I hoped.

It was tasty.
Next experiment will be with just white flour to see if I get the texture I am looking for.  (Or I may try an even wetter dough - this was 1/3 whole wheat, 2/3 bread flour, and then 70% by weight of water.  Maybe the whole wheat needs more water???)

If you have any suggestions, please send them. . .


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