Today was the day of preparation. I made Saucijzebroodjes to go with our poffertjes tomorrow morning – our little family’s traditional Christmas breakfast.
I’ve also managed a loaf of 100% whole wheat bread. The wonderful thing about this loaf isn’t just that it’s 100% whole wheat (which is a bit tricky), but also that it’s the first real loaf I’ve managed with my own home ground flour. I used red hard wheat and hand ground it in my new Back to the Basics Grain Mill and modified a recipe I found on the internet. I’ve learned, over the past week that home ground flour doesn’t bake the same way as the store-purchased stuff. I’m happy with this loaf though. It turned out heavy, nutty and moist – almost perfect:
My first 100% wheat, hand-ground loaf!
All of which is preface to the real purpose of this post: a very blessed Christmas to you and yours!
May it be a perfect continuation of a wonderful holiday season!
Grace and Peace,
`tim
Hand-ground flour hydrates more slowly than commercially milled flour because the particle size is larger in the hand ground, so it takes longer to hydrate. (Same thing with stone ground.) It’s useful to do the basic mixing, and then walk away and give it a rest to allow the moisture to start to distribute evenly. Bran soaks up a lot of water, so there’s less for the rest of the grain. You might need to up the water content a bit.
Hunt me up on ravelry; my former boss at the organic grain bakery wrote a short piece on this and I can share that with you. Also check Rose Levy Beranbaum’s blog http://www.realbakingwithrose.com/ as she write thoughtfully about bread.
Happy Christmas — KnitterguyTed
KnitterguyTed…
Thanks for the link to realbakingwithrose… I’ll definitely check it out! I’m teejtc over at Ravelry, and will friend you over there; would love to check out the piece from your former boss.
For this loaf did a sort-of mini-pre-soak for 20 minutes, and then, since it was a pretty wet dough, I “kneaded” it traditionally for a while and then resorted to something kind-of like a french fold. (I’m haven’t really gotten the hang of the french fold yet, but I’m getting there).
This loaf turned out much better than my first attempt. I’ll be honest though, my first attempt with my home-ground was to try the basic recipe for “Artisan bread in 5 min a day” – it turns out great bread with conventional flour but didn’t get enough oven spring with the home-ground. On the other hand, it made GREAT pizza crust
Grace and Peace,
`tim