Whole Wheat French Bread
Picture taken more than 2 years ago. I’m back experimenting with this recipe, now that I know how to work the multi-day starter. But first the basic, made with commercial yeast:
2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast (SAF instant is wonderful! You can get it at Whole Foods or online at Amazon.com)
1/3 cup warm water
1/4 teaspoon sugar
1 lb. (~ 3.5 cups) white whole wheat flour (freshly milled Montana Gold is awesome!)
1 tablespoon rye flour
2 1/4 teaspoons salt
approx. 1 cup cold water
In a small bowl, sprinkle yeast over warm water along with sugar. Stir briefly to mix and let stand until bubbly, 5-10 minutes. In a large bowl, put flours and salt. Add cold water to yeast mixture, mix well, and add to the flour. Knead in the bowl until combined, adding more water if necessary, then transfer to lightly floured (or oiled, my preference) counter or other flat kneading surface. Continue to knead until dough is smooth, about 15-25 minutes by hand. Form into a ball. (You can also do this in a food processor or heavy duty stand mixer.)
Return dough to bowl, large enough to accommodate at least double the volume of dough. Cover with plastic wrap or clean kitchen towel and set in a warm place. In the oven with the pilot light turned on is great! Let the dough rise for about an hour, until it’s about 1 1/2 times its original volume. Transfer it back to the work surface and shape it roughly into a rectangle approx. 14 inch long. Fold 1/3 down and fold the lower third up (kinda like a brochure). Press again to a 14-inch long rectangle and repeat folding. Return to bowl and let rise again, covered, about 1 1/2 hours or until 3 times its original volume. The time here is approximate as your kitchen’s conditions will be different from mine. What’s important is the amount of rise.
Shape the loaves as desired (you can find basic instructions here, and I promise to do a video or photo-blog about this sometime. With this recipe you can have 3 18-inch baguettes, 2 fat loaves, 2 round loaves, or 12 french rolls. After shaping the loaves/rolls, let rise to more than double again, preferably on a peel (dusted with cornmeal or semolina), or if you don’t have one, use the bottom a baking sheet. Another option is to put it on parchment on a baking sheet or cutting board and slide the loaves/rolls into the oven along with the parchment.
Preheat your oven to 450 degrees F. My oven is lined all the time with quarry tiles, available at Home Depot for around 25-60 cents each. Or you can use a baking stone. I bake my loaves directly on these. Slide the loaves/rolls in one swift motion onto the tiles/stone. Spray the oven walls with water (or have an empty ovenproof pan at the bottom and pour water into it carefully). This will create the steam that is necessary for your french bread to develop a beautiful crust. Your loaves/rolls are done when the core registers 200 degrees F on a thermometer. About 30 minutes for long and round loaves (if you made really large loaves lower heat to 375 degrees F after around 20 minutes). 25 minutes or so for rolls.
E-mail me with questions at stefoodie at gmail dot com. I’m not a french bread expert by any means but I’ll be happy to share whatever I know.
Oh, and in case you’re more experienced at working with white bread dough, just know that whole wheat (even the white kind) takes a bit (sometimes quite a bit) longer to rise. It *will* rise, though, just gotta be patient with it.
And here are some old notes from my personal blog (hey, they still apply!):
The most useful tip I learned last year was to oil my kneading board as opposed to flouring it. It helped me tremendously in keeping the dough nice and supple and not too dense. The danger with flouring the board is that you may be adding more flour than is necessary, and you’ll get a heavy loaf.
The one other thing that I find most important about working with bread is learning exactly what a well-kneaded bread feels like. Until you work with your hands and not a stand mixer you won’t really “get to know” the dough. I was forced to go back to hand-kneading after killing my KA. My DLX spoils me now but handkneading during the months when I didn’t have a mixer taught me a lot so that my mistakes are fewer now. There will still be mistakes, as breadbaking is an art and therefore subject to so many varying factors — you, the temperature, humidity, the quality of the water and the flour and the yeast, etc., but at least you’ll know when YOUR job is done and when it’s time to let nature take over.
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POSTED IN: Breads
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