Click here if you’d like to watch a 15-minute Peter Reinhart video on the art of baking bread.
I find it moving to see that after a lifetime of baking, Reinhart’s awe at what goes on in bread-making, from life (wheat) to death (harvest) to life again (dough) to death again (in the oven) to life again (in our bodies) is still very much, well, alive!
100% Whole Wheat Mash Bread – Updated post (see bottom)
No, this mash bread is the product of two preferments which were already alive in my kitchen as I was writing that other post, both whole wheat: a mash and a levain. I had made both before I even thought of challenging myself. Actually I challenged myself because I made them both.
See, I must be a rebel at heart (at least that’s what the headmistress – who was a nun – told my Dad when she made him come and pick me up from school right in the middle of a workday because I had kicked her in the shin. Of course she didn’t tell him that she had slapped me first and when my Dad heard that, he said he understood and had often felt like kicking her himself but to please not do it again. I was 9 when it happened and to this day, I have never kicked a nun again, so I can’t be that much of a rebel).
Anyway to come back to these preferments, I was a bit stressed out by Reinhart’s instructions about sticking the mash in and out of the oven to keep it at the right temperature and I just didn’t feel like doing it.
Then I remembered that Baggett’s mash making method in Kneadlessly Simple was actually just that… quite simple: it involved pouring boiling water over the whole wheat flour just as Reinhart says to but after that, just to put the bowl in the microwave next to a cup of hot water, to wait 15 minutes and microwave on High for 1 minute, then wait 30 minutes and do it again, and then that was it. You could let the mash do what it had to do without having to worry about it.
But I was mixing her method and his method and even though it was simpler, it was also very confusing and that’s when I decided that enough was enough, I had to read the book and understand the whys and why nots of Reinhart’s technique and take it from there.
However I had my two preferments and they both looked fine. I put them in the fridge overnight so that they wouldn’t get carried away while I was sleeping and two hours after I took them out this morning, they were at room temperature and ready to go to work.
So I took out the book, opened it to page 199 without even glancing at the introduction and set out to read the recipe/formula.
I was astounded right off the bat because, get this, there was NO mention of water. Mash, levain, whole wheat flour, instant yeast, salt and oil or butter (honey or agave nectar or sugar too but it’s optional and I optioned it out) and NO water, which meant that, either the mash and the levain were watery enough for the amount of flour indicated or Reinhart had had a senior moment and completely forgotten about hydration or he had invented a new breadmaking technique that didn’t require any water and I didn’t know about it since I hadn’t read the introduction.
Well, now was not the time to find out. I decided to wing it. Just to be on the safe side, I put a cup of water on standby next to the mixer and proceeded as instructed.
But the dough didn’t need more water. It actually needed more flour! And Reinhart says that, yes, sometimes you have to add water and sometimes you have to add flour, and it’s okay! So I added away. Altogether I added 94 g of whole wheat flour to the 255 g already in the formula.
That’s a lot! But that’s the only way I could think of to eventually get a mash bread and not dozens and dozens of mash silver pancakes because that dough looked like a batter for the longest time, I kid you not. All of a sudden however it decided to stop joking around and settled down to business and it became beautifully soft, smooth and elastic.
It actually became so pleasant to work with that I got second thoughts about reading the book. Don’t they say that too much knowledge can be dangerous?
Ingredients:
For the mash
- 300 g water
- 120 g whole wheat flour
- 1 g diastatic malt powder
For the levain
- 64 g mature whole wheat starter
- 191 g whole wheat flour
- 142 g water at room temperature
For the final dough
- 398 g starter (i.e. all of it)
- 397 g mash (i.e. all of it)
- 255 g whole wheat flour + 94 g (see above)
- 8.5 g salt
- 7 g instant yeast
- 14 g almond oil (you can also use melted butter or vegetable oil and it is optional but I chose to put it in because it helps the bread stay fresh longer)
- extra whole wheat flour for adjustments
Method:
Please note that I am describing what I did, not necessarily what Reinhart says to do. Also note that I used a stand mixer but that the dough can be kneaded by hand.
For the mash
- Set water to boil
- When it boils, pour it over the flour and the malt. Mix briefly and set in the microwave oven next to a cup of hot water
- Fifteen minutes later, microwave on High for one minute without opening the microvave oven. Repeat after 30 minutes and leave to cool in the microwave
- When cool and after 3 hours at room temperature, you can either refrigerate it until you are ready to use it or leave it out overnight if you plan to use it within the next 24 hours. (I left it out for about 12 hours, then I put it in the fridge)
For the levain
- Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl to form a ball of dough. Using wet hands, knead in the bowl for about 2 minutes until the ingredients are evenly distributed and the flour is hydrated. Let rest 5 minutes and knead again with wet hands for one minute. The dough will be tacky
- Transfer to a clean bowl, cover losely with plastic wrap and leave at room temperature for 4 to 6 hours until nearly doubled in size (Reinhart warns it can take 8 hours or longer)
- When the levain is fully developed, knead it for a few seconds to degas it. It is then ready for use but if necessary to coordinate the timing with the mash, cover tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight. Remove from the fridge two hours before mixing the dough (in my case, it stayed out pretty much the whole day then went in the fridge together with the mash)
For the final dough
- Using a metal pastry scraper, chop the starter into 12 smaller pieces
- Put the pieces and all the other ingredients except the extra flour into the mixer with the paddle attachment and mix on slow speed for 1 minute
- Switch to the dough hook and mix on medium-low speed, occasionally scraping down the bowl for 2 or 3 minutes until the pre-doughs become more cohesive and assimilated into each other. Add more flour or water as needed until the dough is soft and slightly sticky (that’s where I started to add the first of the extra 94 g)
- Dust a work surface with flour, take the dough out of the mixer and roll it into the flour to coat and knead for 3 to 4 minutes by hand, incorporating only as much flour as needed (yeah! right) until the dough feels soft and tacky but not sticky
- Form into a ball and let rest for 5 minutes
- Lightly oil a bowl or dough bucket
- Resume kneading for 1 minute and make the final flour adjustment. The dough should pass the windowpane test. (Well, mine didn’t! Not by a long shot. It ripped like crazy, so forget about hand mixing, I threw it back into the mixer and went at it, on medium-low, for as many minutes as it needed to pass the windowpane test and it took a while and I did have to add flour – although it set my teeth on edge because that’s exactly what I hate do do and I hadn’t added any water so why was the dough SOOOOOOO wet?, but I went on mixing and I went on adding flour until I had added in a total of 94 g and that must have been the magic number because all of a sudden the dough started behaving and passed the windowpane test with flying colors and I was in baking heaven)
- Form into a ball and place in the prepared bowl, rolling to coat with oil
- Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature for approximately 45 to 60 minutes, until it is about 1 1/2 its original size
- Transfer to a lightly floured surface and loosely form into a batard
- Let rest for 15 minutes and form into a tighter batard
- Place on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper and dusted with flour (I used a mixture of bran and semolina as it works fine for me)
- Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature for approximately 45 to 60 minutes, until it has grown to 1 1/2 time its original size
- Preheat the oven to 425 F/218 C after putting in it a baking stone and an empty metal pan
- When dough is ready to bake, score it (for whole grains it is best to score at a 90-degree angle to the sides of the loaf), pour a cup of water into the metal pan, lower the temperature of the oven to 350 F/177 C (I have an issue with that as I think it’s way too low. I actually would have liked the loaf to come out of the oven a little bit browner and ruddier, so next time, I’ll shoot for 380 F/193 C from the get go)
- Rotate the loaf 180 degrees and continue baking for another 20 to 30 minutes until the loaf is rich brown on all sides, sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom and registers at least 200 F/93 C in the center (as it wasn’t brown enough, I increased the oven temperature to 380 F/193 C and added 10 minutes to the baking time)
- Transfer to a cooling rack and allow to cool for at least 2 hours before serving and longer if possible.
Reinhart says that mash breads tend to taste better after they have fully cooled, and up to one or two days after they come out of the oven (store them in aluminum foil or a paper bag).
… and I got that using the Baggett’s recipe in Kneadlessly Simple for a 100% whole wheat honey bread based on Reinhart’s mash method. I will need to put the two recipes side by side and see where they differ and try to make adjustments to Reinhart’s until I get the same result. Why not just stick to Baggett’s recipe? Because I don’t find it particularly advantageous not to have to knead. In fact Baggett has us do some heavy mixing (with a spoon) which I find pretty tiresome. Plus her method is for home use only. It wouldn’t work in an environment where you have to make more than one loaf at a time.
Tastewise, Reinhart’s mash bread is very good. It’s hard to describe the flavor other than by saying that it is, well, wheaty, which I happen to love. It doesn’t feel dense or heavy under the tooth, it isn’t chewy, it’s just a great sandwich or breakfast bread. It could not pass for a baguette or a ciabatta but it certainly stands its ground. Will I make it again? Yes, but with white whole wheat to see the difference. Stay tuned!
I had sent a link to this post to Peter Reinhart and here is what he kindly wrote back:
“Thanks for a very entertaining ride! I love that you are playing with all these ideas in your own quest for bread you can fall in love with. Bravo! Nancy’s loaf really gave you great holes–I haven’t been able to get those with my method.
I tried developing a mash using boiling water and never thought to use the microwave the way Nancy did–see, we all have things to learn. I gave up on it because it was too hard to maintain at the right temp.
My wetter version, which really can work without all the oven fretting–just put it in a warm oven and turn it off–the next day the mash should taste sweet like maltomeal cereal. But then, yes, you do have to add lots of flour because it’s such a wet mash.
I think there’s room for perfecting this concept to create the kind of bread you’re looking for but, now that I’m about to put the latest book to bed after a year of intensive writing and research (it goes to press Friday, God willing), I’ll be taking a break from breads for a while and just recharge this summer.
But you know, sooner or later, I’ll dive back in and go after it again.
Interestingly, the whole wheat bread that seems to get the best crumb for me is the spent grain bread with biga. It always opens up nicely and the spent grain adds fabulous flavor. I get the grain from my local brew pub where the brewmaster is happy to set aside a bag from whatever he’s making and I subdivide it into smaller zip bags and keep it frozen. The spent grain has a lot of positive effects on the dough. If you try it, let me know.”
Thank you, Peter! I’ll be sure to read these 75 pages before the new book comes out!
Further musings on nutrition and the (very) young
The scene takes place in the car driving by a well-known fast food restaurant. The characters are Sophia, my 4-year old granddaughter, and myself.
Sophia: I loooooooove chicken nuggets!
Me: Chicken nuggets may be very tasty but they are not very good for your body, you know and…
Sophia: Yes, they are! Maybe they are not very good for your body but my body loves them!
Pondering Preferments
A chickpea levain I once made for a Cretan spiced bread
The baker is thus able to vary the flavor profiles while still using more regular bread flour in the final dough (thus bringing some of the strength back to it). It certainly works very well taste-wise. While at SFBI, I sampled many breads made with specialty flour preferments – as then student Safa Hemzé was experimenting with various flours – and the range of flavors was enormous. For an article on Safa’s work, click here.
The pictures below were taken by me at SFBI in January during an informal bread tasting session. The breads were all made by Safa.
Although I loved the flavors these various preferments brought to each bread, I don’t think that the nutritional benefits of putting most of the specialty flour in the preferment are quite the same as they would be if more of the ancient grain flour was used in the final dough together with more whole grain flour instead of more regular bread flour.
Using a sourdough starter may even be better than just using a poolish or a sponge. Whitley goes on to write in another chapter, “lactic acid bacteria play a part in neutralising substances in wheat flour that can limit nutrient availability to human consumers”.
He explains that “the bran contains considerable amount of phytic acid, which inhibits the absorption of these valuable minerals and trace elements” and that, according to a recent French study, “the action of lactic acid bacteria in sourdough fermentations improves the nutritional quality of wheat bread by reducing the amount of phytate” whereas “simple fermentation with yeast produced less than half the quantity of soluble (available) magnesium at the end of a four-hour period compared with the sourdough”.
So far so good! We have the great taste and some nutritional benefits (the nutrients present in the specialty and/or whole flour plus the outcome of the chemical activity at work in the prefermentation), but can we do better?
After all, as Beatrice Ojakangas puts it in Great Whole Grain Breads, a well-documented book first published in 1984 which is full of interesting and out-of-the-ordinary recipes, “bulk for bulk, whole grain breads have about half the calories of traditional breads, supply the most preferable plant protein, and offer valuable fiber to the diet”.
Couldn’t we have our whole grain and specialty flour flavors and eat them too?
I don’t know but I mean to try and find some answers.
You know how some passionate cooks or bakers set themselves challenges, like making of all the recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking or baking all of the bread formulas in the Bread Maker’s Apprentice? Well, since I’d like to find out whether or not other techniques would make it possible to use more whole grains in more delicious breads, the (limited, I’ll admit it) challenge I am setting to myself is to try and master the master formula detailed by Peter Reinhart in Whole Grain Breads.
Why this particular one?
- Because my first brush with that technique was with a derivative method developed by Nancy Baggett in Kneadlessly Simple (a book I reviewed here). I used it to make a 100% whole wheat loaf and I never made or ate a better 100% whole wheat bread (for some info on my experience making that bread, click here and go to bottom of post); Baggett acknowledges her debt to Reinhart, so I’d like to see what Reinhart’s original idea was;
- Because we liked what I have already baked from the Reinhart’s book, such as the 100 % whole grain multigrain baguettes and I wouldn’t mind getting a firm foundation as to the technique before trying my hand at some of his other recipes (although one of his mashes and his whole wheat levain are sitting on the kitchen counter right now, waiting to be made into one of his mash breads) but I am pretty much proceeding by trial-and-error with that bread since it is a mixture of his ideas and my own and I’d like to be more methodical;
- Because although I adore crunchy, chewy, holey-crumby baguettes and many other mostly white breads, I also love dense loaves (so does my son-in-law, so that makes two of us), a taste that isn’t not always shared by my under-20 descendants. I wouldn’t mind seducing their palate with other flours in such a way that they wouldn’t even realize they were eating “healthfully”, a word which, for whatever reason, seems less than compelling to their young ears… And I’ll be the first to admit that it is absolutely useless to put more “good-for-you” flours in the bread if it doesn’t get eaten;
- Because my eyes have a tendency to glaze over when I try to read the 75 pages or so that lead up to the master formula in Reinhard’s book and because I have yet to follow any recipe faithfully. I’ll have to if I want to master the technique. So I will both read the introduction as carefully as Reinhart begs us to (and I will try not to do that at night when nap attacks are more likely) and follow his instructions to the letter. That’s the promise and the challenge.
As I am currently on an assignment (nothing to do with bread, alas), I can’t promise it will be immediate and even hesitate to set a timeframe. But I promise that it will happen and that I will keep you posted. Meanwhile I’ll keep on baking in my spare time ! Please share your thoughts with me as to the quandary between better taste and better nutrition.
Orange & Plum Miche with Two Preferments
Anyway I had dutifully made the biga (starter dough made from small amounts of flour, water and yeast allowed to ferment for at least 24 hours) two days before and when it had become deliciously and deliriously effervescent, I started to prepare the other ingredients for scaling.
But (why so many buts in life?), just as biga requires commercial yeast (fresh, dry active or instant) , so does the final dough for Pan bigio and, as I was reaching for it, my eyes fell on my liquid starter, forlornly bubbling away in its glass jar. As I hadn’t baked with it the day before, I actually needed to use some of it (or throw some out) to make room in the jar for its daily meal.
So I made up my mind on the spot, decided to keep the pan bigio recipe for a day when I wouldn’t have enough starter (as if that was likely to happen anytime soon) and to strike for a new (to me) frontier in bread-baking: use two preferments in the same dough (I wasn’t about to throw away the biga, as you can imagine).
I closed my eyes and must have been visited by the ghost of Christmas past because, all of a sudden, I had a craving for dried plums and oranges, very little of both, just enough to give the bread a different fragrance and make it more festive. I briefly considered alternatives (mango and Brazil nuts?) but in the end, I stuck with the plum-orange flavor, which is a traditional one in French cooking and baking (although not in bread, at least not in the old days) and very pleasant in a quiet sort of way.
Since the two preferments had been made with regular bread flour, I decided to put at least 50% whole wheat flour in the final dough, and as a final treat (I love huge breads), I decided to make a very big loaf, so that I could give some to family and friends. It did come out big (1.8 kg) and fragrant, not sweet at all which is what I wanted. Too bad web-sampling hasn’t been invented yet. I’d love to have you taste it and tell me what you think…
Ingredients:
For the biga
- 135 g unbleached all-purpose flour
- 115 g water
- 1/8 tsp instant dry yeast
For the final dough
- 445 g whole wheat flour
- 420 g unbleached all-purpose flour
- 390 g water
- 250 g biga
- 225 g liquid starter (100% hydration)
- 50 g plump dried plums, chopped
- 18 g salt
- 5 g dried orange peel, soaked for 20 minutes in hot water, drained and finely chopped
Method:
For the biga
- At least 1 day before but preferably 2, mix yeast and flour in a small bowl and add water
- Stir to incorporate thoroughly, knead briefly until smooth and leave to ferment for 24 hours
- After 24 hours, if not using immediately, refrigerate for another day
- On the day of the baking, bring back to room temperature before using
For the final dough
- Put the biga and the starter in the bowl of the mixer and mix slowly with the paddle attachment until incorporated
- Add 250 g water (reserve the rest), mix again and add the flour
- Mix on low until well incorporated, stop the mixer, cover the bowl and let rest for 20 minutes (autolyse)
- Add the salt and mix on medium speed (3 on my old Rival Chef Excel) with the dough hook, adding water as needed for at least 6 minutes (depending on the flour you use you may have to use more water than I did in this recipe. I used a Hudson Valley artisanal whole wheat flour which doesn’t absorb water readily and I had to adjust for that), until the dough has achieved the right consistency (neither too firm nor too slack, one clue would be to see how well defined the edges are. If the edges are sharpish-looking, you need to add water)
- Give the dough the windowpane test (wet your hands, pull a piece of dough from the mass and gently turn and stretch it. If you manage to create a “window” in the dough without tearing it, it is ready)
- Add the fruit and orange peel
- Mix on low for a minute
- Take the dough out of the bowl, transfer it to a (lightly) flour-dusted countertop and finish incorporating the plums and orange peel by hand making sure they are evenly distributed in the dough
- Oil a big bowl or dough bucket and transfer the dough to it. Close the lid tightly
- The first fermentation should take 1 1/2 to 2 hours
- After that time, the dough should have at least doubled. Take it out and shape it roughly into a ball. Let it rest covered for 20 minutes
- Shape it into a tight boule (ball) and put it, seam down, on a semolina-dusted board. Stick the board in a big clear plastic bag. Blow once into the bag before closing it to create a dome and stick the whole thing in the refrigerator for the night (or 8 to 10 hours during the day if more convenient)
- In the morning, turn on the oven (450 F/232 C) after putting in it a baking stone (if using) with an empty metal pan on the rack under it
- Take the bread out of the refrigerator and let it rest a while at room temperature while the oven heats up (or a bit longer)
- Take the bread out of the bag and transfer it to a semolina-dusted parchment paper
- Stencil and score the loaf as desired
- Pour a cup of cold water in the metal pan, transfer the bread (still on the parchment paper) to the baking stone and spray some water on the walls of the oven (taking care not to aim towards the oven light) to create even more steam
- Close the oven door and let bake for 40 minutes
- After 40 minutes, open the oven to take a look at the bread. It is so big that it will not be done yet but it will probably be already brown enough. If that’s the case, remove the parchment paper, lower the oven temperature to 390 F/199 C and bake another 15 minutes
- Take the bread out and use an instant thermometer (insert on bottom surface) to check its internal temperature. (Mine had been put in the oven while still pretty cold and after 55 minutes, its internal temperature still hadn’t reach 200 F/93 C)
- If necessary, let bake another 10 minutes on 335 F/168C) until the bread’s internal temperature reaches 204 F/96 C
- Take the bread out of the oven and let it cool on a rack. It’ll take a while but it’s well worth the wait…
As always, the loaf has been submitted to Susan, from Wild Yeast, for her weekly Yeastpotting feature. I can’t thank Susan enough for her beautiful, instructive and fun blog and for the kindness with which she displays other bakers’ work. If you haven’t visited Wild Yeast yet, you are in for a BIG treat! Enjoy!
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