Heaven on Earth

Heaven on Earth

Saturday, February 20, 2010

100% Whole Wheat Bread with Olive Oil



The bread for this HBinFive braid is 100% Whole Wheat Bread with Olive Oil.  It's another variation on whole wheat. 


The initial rise in the tub was good.  However, I did make some changes in the recipe for my altitude.  Unfortunately, due to copyright laws I can't share the whole recipe with you, but you can find it here.
Here's the list of my changes to the original recipe:


875 grams whole wheat flour
2 1/4 tsp. yeast
36 grams of vital wheat gluten





Here is the loaf after shaping.





And in the oven.





And here's a slice or two.

Was this my favorite bread from this book?  No.  This bread is way too salty for my taste.  However, whole wheat is notorious for being dense and heavy and I was hesitant to reduce the salt any more for fear of  the bread not raising.  This a very heavy loaf and it spread quite a bit.  Adding flour to stop the spread would make this bread even heavier.  Because of the oil in the recipe the crust will never get crispy, which is a down-side for me as I love the crispy crust that is characteristic of most artisan breads.  It will be interesting to see how the other two assignments go with this master recipe.
I must say I don't like this recipe as well as some other whole wheat loaves.  Maybe with enough honey, butter, or jam I'll like it better.

18 comments:

  1. For being a dense loaf of bread, your crumb looks incredible! My load was no where near as open as yours even with a flat bread.

    This was not a favorite of mine either but no bread with 100% WW flour is, so I was expecting it.

    Michelle

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  2. This bread was not my favorite either. But I'm enjoying seeing all the HBin5 bakers test out the recipes. It was good to meet you too yesterday. Hope to see you soon for a bread baking class!

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  3. Thanks for posting your bread and being honest about your experience. With my extreme schedule over the next ten days I think this is one bread recipe I'll skip.

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  4. It wasn't my favorite either. But you are right, it may be better with jam or something else on it. Your bread looks fabulous! Great job!

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  5. Your loaf is so pretty - you got a great rise!

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  6. I actually liked this bread but I've been using white whole wheat flour by King Arthur rather than regular whole wheat flour

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  7. This bread make better pizza dough and flat bread than loaves. Great job!

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  8. Your loaf looks a whole lot better than mine did. Actually it looks very good.
    Mine spread out a little and was a bit disappointing in taste too.

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  9. I actually really liked this recipe. I didn't make a loaf though, only the focaccia and so I didn't really have to worry about spreading. Sorry you had a bad experience with it!

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  10. Your loaf looks wonderful! Too bad you didn't like it. I think this is my favorite dough so far. I made mine with freshly milled flour though.

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  11. I agree about the bread being dense, which makes sense with both the 100% whole wheat and the olive oil. I liked it better as a flat bread, but what I like about some of the others is their versatility, which this one lacks.

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  12. It seems that just about all the ww breads so far have been dense. But your loaf looks beautiful either way

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  13. I liked this bread but did not like the soft sandwich bread. Good thing we have so many different one to try and it shows how different tastes are. YOur bread though looks very good

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  14. We really liked this bread, but the flour I used was more of a white wheat flour, I guess. I shaped it into a small round loaf and it didn't seem to flatten as much as some others have.
    ~Jenny~

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  15. Your loaf looked great. I wasn't fond of this dough either, but it made a pretty good pizza.

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  16. Really nice loaf shape! Did you stretch the dough, or did you do the envelope shaping method?

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  17. Judy,
    I stretch the dough and then do a variation of the envelope shaping method. I find that I just need to let the loaf set a bit longer to raise.

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