Bread - Whole Wheat Bread

When the boys wake up at 5:40 in the morning, you don't have anywhere you need to be until late morning, and you are almost out of bread, what should you do?  Get dressed, get kid 2 out of the crib, change kid 2's diaper, dress kid 2, inform kid 1 that he should really sleep longer since it is so early, inform kid 1 that his whining won't change your mind, set a timer for kid 1 so he knows when it is ok to come downstairs, heat up leftover coffee from yesterday, forget about coffee while dealing with kid 2's nasty diaper, put kid 2 in his high chair and look at food options that won't be too difficult to clean up off the floor, go upstairs to convince kid 1 that yes he does need to try to rest longer because it'll make the rest of the day better for everybody, attend to kid 2's screeching so mom doesn't wake up (it's her turn to sleep in today), check weather forecast for a possible outing later in the day, remember coffee and heat it up again, stop kid 2 from making a big mess with his sippy cup, drink that first sip of coffee... aaaaaaaaah, sit for a moment, pick up pancake pieces off the floor, gather bread ingredients, attend to kid 1 who is insisting his timer went off when it hasn't yet, get more food for kid 2, have another drink of coffee... aaaaaaah, get kid 2 down from his high chair, get kid 2 down from the coffee table he just climbed, pull out a couple toys kid 2 likes, go upstairs to confirm with kid 1 that he may now come downstairs, turn on Sesame Street, finally start making bread.

It is a wonder that anything gets done in this house.  It is now 8:00, and bread is rising and I am wondering if I'll be able to finish this bread before we need to meet family later this morning.  But I am getting ahead of myself.

Background and Preparation

At the start of the Bread section, the Ladies included the following little poem:

It really is a compliment
To have a guest to tea
Who says, "This is delicious.
I'd like the recipe."



I agree whole-heartedly, though I could never put my thoughts to verse since I am no poet at all.  I am not an educated enough of a cook to really create my own recipes, but I do really like it when people ask for recipes of food I made.  Maybe that says more about my direction-following abilities than my skill in the kitchen.

Before I started this recipe, I looked at the How to Follow the Recipes page

Still not sure why this is on page 16, when my recipe is on page 7

Generally, I don't sift flour when cooking.  When making bread, amounts of flour is variable.  But, I am doing my best to do it as the Ladies would have done it, so I dug out our vintage flour sifter at least for the whole wheat flour in the recipe.  This sifter is probably one of the oldest things in our house and probably dates more or less from around the time the cook book was published.

This might be the closest thing to an antique we have.

Here's our recipe for the day.  Looks pretty straight forward (mostly)

There's just one problem:  yeast.  I've got three different forms of yeast in the house right now: active dry, instant, and a sadly neglected sourdough starter.

Audreytoo, daughter of Atlas is in poor shape.

Not having any knowledge of cake yeast, I turned to a pretty handy website that has helped me out many times, The Cook's Thesaurus.  When you don't have the vinegar, or cream, or anything that is called for in a recipe, this website is great so you can at least figure out something that will work so you don't have to go buy some new food product that you may not use again for months.  The problem is with cake yeast is that it looks to be that it comes in two standard sizes and the recipe doesn't indicate which to use.  Considering that 2.25 tsp of yeast is standard for most breads, I'll operate under the assumption that the smaller sized cake was intended.

Yeast aside, the recipe is pretty easy.  I've been making most of the bread in our house for the last few years.  What I make is ok.  I am mostly self-taught, so there is certainly some technique refinement that I could learn, but my sandwich bread holds peanut butter fairly well so nobody's complaining.  Step one, scald milk, add stuff, and cool.  Meanwhile bloom the active dry yeast.

Happy yeast.

Cold water bath to cool down the milk and water mixture.

There are a few tools in the kitchen that I really like, an digital instant-read thermometer is one of them.  Don't let whatever you are putting your yeast into be any warmer than 120 degrees, folks.  You don't want to commit yeast genocide.

One tool that I'm not sold on is a dough whisk.  It was recommended to me after I took a sourdough class at Mississippi Market.  The class was great, and the guy who taught it swore by his dough whisk.  I've just found it to be more cumbersome than a good wooden spoon.  Unless I am using our stand mixer, a wooden spoon is the tool for me.

Maybe it would be good for quick bread batters, but not for a stiff dough.

After mixing, it was time to kneed, and time to rise.

Go gluten go!  And wow, it looks like my arm is a mile long.

Go yeasties go!

Fortunately, a warm morning means active yeast, so the first rise was quick.  We had family to meet and donuts to eat.  My next favorite kitchen tool when it comes to bread is my bench scraper.  It is great for scraping, as the name implies, but also great for cutting doughs.  After flattening the dough into a large rectangle, I cut the dough in half.  Then I misted it with water, so when I rolled it up (kind of pinching it in along the way), large air pockets wouldn't develop.

Almost there.

One last rise.  Maybe I should have used 4x8" pans.

I might have been getting a little impatient for the second rise since we were going to be meeting family for donuts, so I popped the bread in the oven before the loaves crested much over the top of the pans.  I don't know if it was the abbreviated second rise, something to do with the recipe, or what, but the bread cooked faster than the recipe indicated.  When I pulled the bread out when my timer went off, the internal temperature was more than needed to be.  I learned somewhere along the way that a simple flour, water, salt, yeast bread only needs to be at 190 degrees to be done, but if there is more in the recipe that the temperature will need to be higher.  I usually shoot for about 200 degrees.

The temperature was still rising at this point.

And here's our finished product.

There's nothing like hot bread fresh out of the oven.

Tasting and Reaction

No tasting pictures this time.  Sorry.  My first impression came as I dumped the loaves out of their pans.  These were not going to be light and airy loaves of bread.  Cutting into the bread confirmed my thoughts.  The crust was pretty substantial.

Sarah:  The cruse is really crunchy.
Me:  It is very wheaty too.  I know flour is made from wheat, but this tastes like, well, wheat.
Thomas:  Mmmmmmm.*
Me:  It's kind of dense too.
Sarah:  Yeah, it is kind of dense and chewy.
Me:  I think it is overcooked too.  It's a bit dry.
James (from later on) with toasted bread:  I don't want it daddy.  It was crunchy and you made it more crunchy.

Final Thoughts

Home made fresh bread is one of my favorite things, but I think I will stick to my favorite bread recipes for now.  I remember reading somewhere that a 3:1 white flour to whole wheat flour ratio is about all the farther you want to take things.  The denseness of this recipe seems to confirm that.  When I want a whole wheat recipe, I'll stick to this great multi-grain recipe from America's Test Kitchen.  It's not that this recipe was bad, far from it.  I guess I am just looking for some different qualities in my bread.  Thank you for the bread, Mrs. John Lager, but I will wait to see some of your other baked delights before I personally request one of your recipes.

Next week:  Breakfast Cakes.

*this is what a Thomas says to everything he puts in his mouth when he's in a good mood and we're watching him eat.