Perfecting the Whole Wheat Recipe

Last week, I tried tweaking my whole wheat recipe.  The dough turned out too stiff, and the bread didn't rise well enough.  It came out very dense.

I think that there wasn't enough water.  The previous recipe had me adding ¼ cup of white flour and a few ounces of water when I was preparing the dough recipe.  This week, I am going to incorporate all of the water and white bread flour into the first step of preparing the sourdough sponge.

First up, I start with 4 ounces of sourdough starter from the fridge.  I feed my sourdough starter with equal parts of water and flour by weight.  Thus, this amount of starter contains 2 ounces of water and 2 ounces of flour.  My original recipe calls for 9 ounces of water and 1¼ cups of white bread flour.  I convert the flour measurement to weight by simply weighing 1¼ cups of flour.  I came up with 6 ounces.  So, I need 9 ounces of water and 6 ounces of white flour.  The sourdough starter gives me 2 ounces of each, so I need to add 7 ounces of water and 4 ounces of flour.  Mix that up and set it in the warm spot for 6 to 8 hours.

Now, my recipe looks like this:

	Original recipe	Whole Wheat
Sourdough starter	None	Take 4 oz. of starter from fridge.  Add 4 oz. of white flour and 7 oz. of water
Water	9 oz.	Already in the sponge
Whole wheat flour	2 ¼ cups	2 ¼  cups
White flour	1 ¼ cups	Already in the sponge
Salt	1 ½ tsp	1 ½ tsp
Butter	1 ½ Tbl	1 ½ Tbl
Honey	¼ cup	¼ cup
Yeast	2 ½ tsp	Already in the sponge

This method produced a pretty good dough ball without any adjustments.  I didn't even need to scrape any ingredients away from the side of the pan as it  worked on its mixing cycle.  Perhaps that is a good indicator of when I have enough water.

Next time, I think I am going to stick with my 50-50 method for the sponge.  I'll add 4 oz. of flour and 4 oz. of water, and add 3 oz. of water when I add the rest of the ingredients.

Having an excess of water in the sponge meant that it didn't rise to double its original size.  I don't think that's a problem, since there was still evidence of yeast activity.  The sponge was nice and bubbly when I added the rest of the ingredients, but I'd be more confident in the timing of the sponge if it were twice as big.  Adding some water to the rest of the ingredients also gives me something to work with if I need to encourage the last bits of honey out of a near-empty bottle.

I think I am going to take my starter off of its diet, as well.  Next week, I am going back to the feeding regimen of 4 oz. of water and 4 oz. of flour.  I'll be throwing out some starter every week, but it is only a waste of 3/8 of a cup of flour.  I might go back to trying to do something with the discards, but I think my starter will be healthier with a more robust feeding.

The Result

Call me shorty.

It's supposed to look more like this:

OK, it appears that my task of perfecting this recipe is going in the wrong direction.  This loaf is about half the height that it ought to be.  I think this is destined to be croutons or bread pudding or something.  I'm jumping right into my plan for improving on this, tomorrow.  I've already taken my freshly-half-ration-fed starter out of the fridge.  I discarded all but 4 oz. and fed it with 4 oz. of flour and 4 oz. of water--a full feeding.  Tomorrow, I'm trying it, again.

I think I am going to cut the salt back to 1 tsp.  In the pre-sourdough days of this recipe, I increased the salt, because the dough was rising too much, and then falling back.  That's not the problem here.

Here are a few more pictures to show the scale:
The bread along with a can of liquid bread.

This picture gave me an idea of what to do with this loaf.  I've been nursing a wrist injury for a little while.  This loaf will make a handy 1½ pound weight for wrist curls.

Next: Tomorrow's version.  Spoiler alert: It still isn't right.