Push-button Whole Wheat

I thought I wasn't going to need to make bread until next weekend, but it seems that mold spores decided to eat my last loaf before I could.  That left me without bread and without the luxury of planning a day in advance to prepare everything. To make matters worse, I have a singing lesson after work that will keep me away from home until about 6:30 PM.  That wouldn't leave much time for the bread machine cycle to finish before I went to bed.

I decided to try my two-step process that I used some weeks ago where I let my sponge mature right on top of the rest of the ingredients.  I tried this with my whole wheat recipe. 

I started by refreshing my starter over night.  Then, this morning, I intended to put all of the ingredients except for the sponge in the bread pan, add the sponge on top, and set the delay timer on my bread machine for about 12 hours.  The idea being that the kneading and baking take between 3 and 4 hours.  That gives the sponge 8 hours to grow

The recipe is

Whole Wheat, Take 6
Remove 4 oz. of starter.  Add 4 oz. of white flour and 4 oz. of water.  Set in a warm place for about 6-8 hours until it doubles in size.  Then, add
Water	4 oz.
Whole wheat flour	2 ¼ cups
White flour	1  cup
Vital Gluten	none
Salt	1 tsp
Oil	2 Tbl
Honey	¼ cup

.
Only in this case, I didn't set the sponge aside.  I put all of the other ingredients in the bread pan, with the white flour on top, and the whole wheat flour just under that.  Then, I added the just-mixed sponge on top and set the delay timer to have the bread ready in 12 hours.

My intention, was to get this set up and started before I left for work, and come home 12 hours later, after my voice lesson, to a completed loaf of bread.

Unfortunately (for me, not the bread) I was greeted by a migraine as I was getting ready for work, so I decided to stay home.  Not so good for my head, but it allowed me to document the progress of my push-button bread recipe.

With all of the ingredients in the bread pan and the immature sponge on top, I have this:

After several hours, that grows into this:

After the first mixing cycle (several more hours later), I have a nice looking dough ball.

It sticks slightly to the pan as the paddle moves it around, but it doesn't get stuck.  In the end, I have this lovely loaf of bread.

Technical details

I still have most of last week's loaf of bread, so I won't be making anything new this week.  Instead, I decided to write about the details of my process.  Let's start with my bread machine.  I've been baking bread with a machine for more than 30 years, I think.  The machine that I'm using is a Toastmaster TBR 15.  I was skeptical that this model was still for sale, but sure enough, you can buy it from Amazon.

When I started this sourdough-with-my-bread-machine project, I thought I might have to experiment with the various cycles available from the machine.  I sought out the manual that detailed the times for each of the cycles.  In the end, I just use the whole wheat cycle for everything.

While we are on the subject, I have also standardized on a starter preparation.  Earlier, some of my recipes called for 6 oz. of starter and some called for 4 oz. of starter.  I've found success with just using the 4 oz. procedure for everything.  Now, my standard starter preparation is:

Discard half of the starter from the fridge.  Add 4 oz. of white flour (by weight, that's 3/4 cup by volume) and 4 oz. of water (weight and volume ounces are the same for water).  Set in a warm place for about 6-8 hours until it doubles in size.  Remove 4 oz. of the refreshed starter (by weight) for the recipe sponge.  Add 4 oz. of water and 4 oz. of white bread flour and set it in a warm place for 6-8 hours.  Put the remaining starter back in the fridge for next time.

As I have adapted to my summer schedule (I usually play golf on weekend mornings), I have been allowing more than 8 hours for each step above.  The starter refresh procedure happens over night.  I usually prepare it after dinner, so I don't forget before going to bed.  That has it growing for about 10 hours before I prepare my sponge.  I do that at about 7AM the next morning, and don't get around to making the bread until around 3PM.  That is 8 hours.  I've had good success with this schedule, so perhaps longer growing times for these first two steps are better.

That's all of the details for this week.  Now, I have a question for you.  Who are you?  Every time that I post something to this blog, I see two views within a minute or two of posting.  I suspect that this might be some sort of automatic viewer.  Then, within a few more minutes there are a few more views.  It appears to me that I have a few loyal readers, but you've never left me a comment.  Let me know what you think of this blog.  Is there anything that you'd like to see?

Another 1/3 cup

I've been gradually shifting the white-to-rye ratio in my rye bread recipe toward more rye content.  Last week's recipe came out good, and it is fairly dense, even though it rose well.  I don't think I'm going any farther toward more rye after this week.

As before, I am moving 1/3 cup of flour from the white column to the rye column.  This week's recipe is

Ryer Rye Bread, Take 3
Remove 4 oz. of starter from the fridge.  Add 4 oz. of white flour and 4 oz. of water.  Set in a warm place for about 6-8 hours until it doubles in size.  Then, add
Water	7 oz.
Salt	1 tsp
Caraway seeds	1 Tbl
Oil	2 Tbl
Vital gluten	2 tsp
Rye flour	2 Cup
White bread flour	1 1/3 Cup

The water content might not be exactly as above.  When I was first adding ingredients, I mistakenly put in two teaspoons of salt.  At that point, I had only added the water, oil, and salt, so I dumped the whole shebang and started over.  Since the pan was wet from the residue of what was dumped, I only added 6 oz. of water.  I figured there was probably an ounce or a bit less still stuck to the pan.

After the first mixing cycle, I have a nice cohesive dough ball.  It's rather coarse, but it didn't take any tinkering to get to this state.

An hour later, after more kneading, it has spread out a bit, but isn't as limp as last week's dough at this point in the process.

The result is just what I was looking for.  It's a little shorter than my previous loaves, but still well risen.  It still has that silly hairdo.  I might try to figure out how to fix that in the future.  For now, I just cut it off and call it a hamburger bun.

Ryer rye, take 2

My last few rye bread loaves have been rising remarkably well.  The recipe started out as something that I called rye-flavored white bread. For good health, I'd like to eat more whole grain flour than white flour. Plus, I like the flavor of rye. On the other hand, I am aware that 100% rye recipes can be hard to distinguish from stones. So, my strategy is to gradually shift the white to rye ratio until the loaf comes out too dense.  This week, I am moving 1/3 dup from white to rye compared to my last rye loaf.  My recipe is now,

Ryer Rye Bread, Take 2
Remove 4 oz. of starter from the fridge.  Add 4 oz. of white flour and 4 oz. of water.  Set in a warm place for about 6-8 hours until it doubles in size.  Then, add
Water	7 oz.
Salt	1 tsp
Caraway seeds	1 Tbl
Oil	2 Tbl
Vital gluten	2 tsp
Rye flour	1 2/3 Cup
White bread flour	1 2/3 Cup

Now, I'm up to a 50-50 ratio of white to rye if you don't count the white flour that goes into the starter.

During the first mixing cycle the dough looked pretty good, but it was tending to stick in the corner of the pan.

I scraped the bits that were clinging to the top of the pan and that bit that was in the back right corner and attached them to the dough.  I sprinkled a little white flour into the pan, similar to what I would do to the counter if I were kneading this by hand.  The amount of the sprinkle isn't significant enough to add to the recipe.

After an hour the dough ball looked a little limp, but I decided not to tinker with it.

It was still sticking to the side of the pan, and it hadn't picked up some of the flour from the earlier sprinkle. I suspect that it didn't spend too much time in that back right corner. Nevertheless, I decided to leave it alone and hope for the best.

Here's the final product:

That's another healthy rise.  Next time, I'm moving another 1/3 cup of flour from the white to the rye.