Bread with milled wheat berries
I finally made a loaf with milled wheat berries and was surprised by the results. I liked the bread a lot, but it was completely different than the whole wheat bread that I usually make with whole wheat flour. In fact the recipe was different. With the milled wheat, I just used milled wheat berries, commercial yeast, salt and water. My other recipe also calls for honey and molasses. This leads me to wonder, commercial whole wheat bread and modern recipes seem to give you a bread far removed from what the original whole wheat really is, or was. Why was it changed so much? The milled wheat bread is just a bit more dense, but has great flavour. Why have we gone to the modern whole wheat flour with additives such as molasses and honey, what is the advantage? I don't really understand why we would make this change.
You don't know what else is hidden. Bakeries aren't required to declare additives such as enzymes on ingredients list. They are considered "processing aids", but they do alter dough characteristics.
As to why molasses, or honey, that has to do with sweetness and color. Sweeter loaves color faster (in and out) and generally have a more tender crumb. The sweetness also offsets the bitterness caused by insufficiently fermented whole wheat dough. In other words, faster fermentation comes at the expense of flavor, so they add sweetners to bring some "natural sweetness" back.
Khalid
If using commercial yeast I put in some honey , molasses or barley malt syrup to counter the bitterness of the whole grains because they can't be fermented well or long enough. If making Sourdough I omit it unless if it is a whole rye or or pumpernickel with a high % of whole rye.
I don't know what commercial bakeries do to their bread but know that my home milled flour of any kind does not look, taste or smell like any whole grain flour I have bought anywhere. It is the same green or aged for 3-4 weeks and left to oxidize. Something is missing in retail flour which really comes out in green flour that is fermented right after milling.
That's really interesting. How long are you supposed to ferment whole grains to get rid of the bitterness?
the bitterness, I sift then out, after grinding,using a sieve, to remove 15-18% of the hard bits. I then do a 3 stage levain build and feed this to the starter to make the levain. After 9 hours, 1 hour after the 3rd feeding, I then refrigerate the levain for 24 hours. I then let it warm up on the counter and let it finish doubling. So when the levain hits the autolysed dough flour, the hard bits have been fermenting for 34 hours. They then do about 3 hours on the counter during dough development and then another 12-24 hours in the fridge during the dough retard.
If I am making a commercial yeast bread, i will make a poolish and feed it the hard bits and let it sit for 12 hours before using it, But, it can still be bitter. I think it is the LAB and acid in the SD that breaks down the bitterness.
Red wheat is supposedly more bitter than white. I just made a 75% whole white wheat bread and didn't taste any bitterness at all. And that was without a preferment and less than a 6 hour bulk ferment.
Ok, thankyou very much.
@dabrownman. I used your instructions on my other thread to make the milled wheat flour and I really liked it. The bread was really dense though, is it supposed to be? I grew up on Wonderbread so I really have no idea what "real" bread is supposed to be like. I am used to making homemade bread with commercial white bread flour and it always give a really light fluffy loaf, and seems almost idiot proof. But I am assuming this is because commercial bread flour is modified so it is easy and convenient to use.
It is not supposed to be dense, but it will not be like Wonderbread - which some say is like cotton candy. I found that after converting to 100% whole wheat that I can use 100% red wheat, and it tastes strong to be, but not have any bitterness even without sugar or honey, and that white whole wheat is much more subtle.