Ben Benner’s Blog

I am having trouble getting to sleep tonight, so I figured I would knock out a quick blog post. I would be coding, but I just cannot for the life of me focus enough to code. So hopefully I can focus enough to write a little bit.

I mixed up some honey wheat bread the a couple of days ago. The bread didn’t get as good a proofing as I would have hoped for, it didn’t get as tall as I would have liked. The actual proofing of the bread I think was good, in that when it was baked it did not bust open. Bread that hasn’t proofed long enough will “explode” when baking, still edible, but ugly.

Now, let me try to explain the title of this post a little bit. I think I have come up with a decent recipe for Honey Wheat bread. I made the first version of this bread in mid December. I believe that had the desire to try and make a Honey Wheat bread because of the Brioche bread that I had made earlier in the month.

I wanted to add something else to the bread, in part to add some flavor and make it look prettier, but also to help clear out some of the spices I bought previously. I settled on adding some black sesame seeds to the bread. I think it would likely work well with poppy-seeds as well, but I haven’t had the chance to buy any.

I baked the Honey Wheat in a loaf pan instead of on the baking stone. It was tasty, but the bread didn’t quite have enough of a honey flavor for me. I augmented the recipe the second go-around, I doubled the amount of honey that I had put in the first time.

Here is the recipe (as best as I can remember it, really need to start writing these down).

Honey Wheat With Black Sesame Seeds

• 1.5 Cups of lukewarm water
• 1 Cup of Whole Wheat Flour (unbleached)
• 2 Cups of All-Purpose Flour (unbleached)
• 1.5 Tbl Active Yeast (I believe this to be a 1.5 packets)
• 1.5 Tbl Kosher Salt
• 2 Tbl Spoons of Black Sesame Seeds
• 1.5 Cups of Honey

You can mix by hand or with a stand mixer. I mix all of the wet ingredients with the salt and yeast and allow it to site for about 5 minutes. I then mix in the whole wheat flour, after the flour has been mixed into something that can only be described as ‘gruel’, mix in the all-purpose flour, I did it one cup at a time.

If you are mixing by hand, then mix until it feels like you cannot mix it any more and when you see that all of the flour has been mixed in. If you are doing it in the stand mixer, make sure to use the dough hook and stop it when it looks like all the dough has pulled away from the side of the bowl.

Allow the bread about two hours for it’s first rise. You can bake the bread after the first rise, but as I have said before, I really believe that the bread needs to ferment in the fridge over night at least, possibly two nights even.

On baking day, take out the dough and roll it out with a rolling pin, all the while dusting with whole wheat flour to avoid the dough sticking. I like to do a three fold of the rolled dough, folding the two outer edges towards the middle. Then tuck the edges of the bread underneath and place into a greased baking pan.

If your kitchen is fairly warm 70-80 degrees, then you might want to try and break the above recipe into two pieces. If your kitchen is cooler, more like mine is at the moment, then you will likely want to keep this as a single loaf of bread. You can improve the rise of your bread by allowing your bread to rise near the oven, which you should have started preheating to 400 degrees.

Allow your bread to proof for at least 40 minutes, if your kitchen is cooler, then you will want to allow it to proof longer. Bake the bread for about 20 minutes. If the crust has turned a nice brown, then you should lower the temp to 350. If not, then allow your bread to bake for another 5 minutes and check again. After the crust has reached a nice color, bake on 350 for another 15 minutes or so. (might want to check on it 10 minutes in)

Remove the bread from the oven and place on a cooling rack, as soon as the pan is cool to the touch, remove the bread from the pan and place on the cooling rack.

In recent discussion the subject of a ‘proofing box’ came up. I am going to look into the subject some more, as one of the aspects about my bread that I wish to improve is the rise of my bread, my bread tends to be very flat.

Note: Both my first and second batches of this bread were stated to be good. I had at least one co-worker inform me that he thought it was my best bread yet.

Ok, I am not finally sleepy.

Laterz

bdbenner baking baking, bread, bread recipe, honey wheat, recipe