Some of the better moments of older age involve figuring out—finally!—some vexatious detail from a younger day. For example, like every other aging hippie, I remember the “natural foods” movement of the early 1970’s. How dense and heavy were those loaves of bread made entirely with whole wheat flour!
I knew how to bake home made bread at the time. But I could never get a decent loaf using only whole-wheat flour. They usually “lost their dome” and fell flat. If I baked these disappointments, they never sprouted a dome in the oven, the way a cake would do. No, they just hardened into dense, heavy bricks. I was poor enough back then that I ate them anyway. But with every gnaw I vowed to unlock the secret and master the craft of making bread with zero white flour content.
Most home bakers I have known suffered the same problem. The most popular solution for getting a nice “lift” into so-called “whole wheat” bread has been to incorporate white flour into it. But that defeats the purpose. So I continued my quest to learn the trick of making bread with 100% whole wheat flour.
A bread machine gave me my first victory. I thought it might be that the machine handled the relatively more sticky dough better than I could by hand. More recently, I have come to believe that the machine gets its result by allowing the dough to rest following the initial mixing.
In his most recent bread books, Peter Reinhart refers to this rest period as the “autolyse”. Basically, the flour is allowed to soak up the water completely, immediately after mixing. This process permits more of the essential gluten proteins to form.
Left to rest and soak, the dough changes in important ways. It becomes less sticky to handle. And it kneads much better. I mix my dough in a stand-type mixer these days. A short minute with the paddle beater, then a 20-minute autolyse interval, followed by three minutes or less with the dough hook, and it is ready for the raising bowl. An hour later, it forms into loaves that rise to rival anything I ever created with white flour.
I learned a few other things that help in small ways. I might write later about sourdough, or reasons why to raise loaf bread inside a plastic bag. But I must say, the rest period immediately after mixing—the aytolyse—makes a big difference.
I weigh my ingredients. Most office products stores sell inexpensive postage scales that will do the job nicely. Here is the recipe I use:
Whole Wheat Flour 15 ounces Water 11 ounces Sugar 1 ounce Olive oil 1 ounce Salt 1.5 teaspoons Instant yeast 1.5 teaspoons
It makes a 1 1/2 pound loaf, more or less. You probably do not even need a mixer. Stir the ingredients together in a good-sized bowl until well combined. Let sit for 20 minutes. Knead for a few minutes, until it feels strong and silky-smooth. Let it raise in a covered bowl at room temperature for about an hour, or until it doubles in volume, whichever comes last. Shape it into a loaf and allow to raise a second time until it doubles in volume or otherwise looks ready to bake. (You have to learn by experience to recognize when bread is ready for the oven.) Bake at 350 to 400 degrees for half an hour.
If there is any compensation for all that older age takes away, surely it comes in the form of high-domed loaves of whole-wheat bread, warm and fragrant, the once-unattainable stuff of youthful yearning, cooling on a rack in one’s own kitchen.