Anybody have any experience making bread from wheat berries (ground or unground) with little if any processed (store bought) flour? Trying to unplug from processed wheat. Yeah, Michael Pollan is rummaging around in my head again.
"Billy" wrote
I do, with 100% hard red and/or hard white wheat berries, fine ground to a flour in a Nutrimill.
As a green flour it took nearly a hundred loaves of trial and error tweaking before I could finally say I have it right, at least for today ;) The point being that using regular 'whole wheat' recipes and merely substituting the white flour with 'green' whole ground wheat flour will leave you disappointed.
Also, fresh ground whole wheat makes a bread different from any you have ever tasted. (It's a hardy, robust flavor to say the least). I had never tasted that before making my own. This makes me doubt whether one can actually buy such a finished product in the retail market.
I'll be happy to take a shot at any specific questions.
Steve Young
Just one, what is your recipe for "green" whole ground wheat flour bread? As I said in my post, I've had this bread before but it was a very long time ago. My object is to make bread from the least processed grain (flour) as possible.
The closest I've tasted to it commercially is "five grain" bread in France and Germany.
I've been using stoneground wheat and unbleached bread flour, half & half, along with coarsely cracked wheat berries (cooked with an equal am't of water so it doesn't suck all the moisture from the dough). I amend it all with a tablespoon of vital wheat gluten, too. Have developed a decent recipe over the years. I've used coarsely cracked nine-grain, too, instead of cracked wheat. I agree that once having eaten REAL bread, it's difficult to eat the white paste that passed for store-bought! I also freeze the bread in its wrapper, removing slices as needed; it keeps well and tastes freshly baked.
"Billy" wrote
OK, here's a fabulous whole grain bread I make in a Breadman TR2200C or the Breadman Ultimate Plus ABM. It's my own concoction, as I've not found many sources which consider the problems associated with 'green' fresh ground whole flours, much less recipes.
To work in an ABM, you must custom program a whole wheat selection. This recipe will make a high rising, reasonably light loaf, using 100% green whole grain flour. (Consult the manual if you haven't set a custom program. It's quite easy with this machine).
Select 1.5lb loaf Program: Preheat 1 hr
1st knead 3 min 2nd knead 17 min 1st rise 36 min punch down 15 sec 2nd rise 0 min shape 0 sec Manually pause machine, remove dough and paddle, hand shape by folding and rolling with hands a number of times, return dough to machine and press start. 3rd rise 36 min bake 52 min bake temp 340 deg FI grind the grains using a Nutrimill grain mill on the finest setting. Use a high protein hard wheat. I find that hard spring white produces a much better rise than red wheat.
In the order I load the pan:
1 1/2 tsp Sea Salt placed in corners or mixed into the flour 1/4c flax meal (fresh ground from seed) (spread evenly) 2 Tbl lecithin granules 1/4 tsp ascorbic acid 1 1/2 Tbl brown sugar 1 1/4c milk (I use 2%) warm to 120F, then pour into pan.evenly spread on top:
3c hard white wheat flour (fresh ground) 1tsp diastatic malt 1 tsp SAF Instant yeast (in center) SAF yeast is very active, so if you use another brand, you may need to increase 50%+, probably use 1 3/4 - 2 tsp.2Tbl of your favorite oil. (I use olive) add the oil after the first 3min knead, when all flour has worked into the dough. I manually use a spatula to assist during the first knead so that it is completely wetted, then pour in the oil.
When the loaf has finished baking I remove it from the pan to cool on a rack. At this time I brush on a tablespoon of melted butter.
A fine source for raw ingredients:
Steve Young © 2008
Thank you. I am very grateful for your hard earned information.
We make a loaf with 5 cups whole wheat that we grind ourselves on the day and one cup of organic white boughten flour. The disadvantage is keeping bugs out of the berries (We freeze them). This is still well worth it, not to mention other baking and blueberry pancakes, etc.
Mike
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