(Work In Progress)

High Performance Whole Wheat Bread

Whole wheat bread that tastes like whole wheat bread, but isn’t dense

Whole wheat bread gets a really bad rap. I think this is for two main reasons:

• A lot of whole wheat flour is super old. The germ and bran get rancid, which tastes gross
• Bad texture. The bran, since it’s hard and sharp, pokes holes in the gluten, making the bread dense

So, can we fix these problems? The first one is easy, just use great flour. Amazing mills are popping up all over the country, but I’ve used flour from Cairnspring and Camas Country Mill and loved everything I’ve made with them. You can probably find a flour near you.

On the texture point, if we just treat the flour as flour, we’re probably not going to get the results we want. Flour is made up of three main things: the bran (outer layers of the wheat, makes up ~14.5% of the wheat kernel), germ (embryo, ~2.5%), and endosperm (starchy part, what we think of as white flour, 83%).

The insight here is that if we treat the germ and bran (hereafter called offal) as we would with any other grain mix-in, we can get good texture AND pure whole wheat flavor.

The flour I’ll be using is Fortuna wheat from Lopez Island. It’s probably a little low on protein, but it tastes great.

Flour makes a difference!

In late 2024, I ordered a bunch of really cool flours from Camas Country Mill, including this Amarillo flour. I made some bread with it, and was pretty blown away with the color and flavor.¹ I hadn’t really thought about flour having distinct flavors until I tried these flours.

1/16-1/17: Scalded offal, 15%

I did the following: Scald

• 135g wheat offal (15%)
• 340g boiling water (38%) (2.5:1 ratio of water to bran) Pour water over bran, stir until combined, cover, cool completely

Dough

• 900g sifted Fortuna flour (sifted through 40 and 50 mesh sifters)
• 630g water at 80-85°F (70%)
• 200g leaven (22%)
• 18g salt (2%) 1 hour autolyse, 3 hour bulk ferment, stretch and fold every 30 minutes. Scald added after an hour and a half.

Shape, overnight proof in fridge.

I was really happy with this! Texture was great, flavor was great. No pictures this time. Pressing on to higher percentages!

1/23-1/24: Scalded offal, 20% and 30%

Going to make a split batch: one with 20% scalded bran, and one with 30%.