My 4th bread baking lesson: Peter Reinhart's transitional whole wheat bread

Since he tasted the big homemade loaf from last time, my husband has been wanting it all the time, and wondering why the loaf was completely gone after he'd eaten just a few slices. What happened was that, I thought he didn't like carbohydrates much, so I helped finish the loaf myself during the week. But obviously I was seriously wrong! He loved it just as much as I did.

After my first "true success", I've got more and more excited with Peter Reinhart's bread recipes. I'm moving towards whole grain. However, I've heard that whole wheat flour has so much fiber that it is hard to develop gluten. So, instead of jumping right into a whole wheat loaf, I wanted to try out a 50-50 mix. Before proceeding with the experiment, I prepared my husband for the potential heaviness of the half whole wheat bread. When he heard that I was going to bake a half whole wheat bread, he coined it the "half-wit bread". (My husband is a source of infinite fun!)

Recipe: Peter Reinhart's transitional whole wheat sandwich bread (with mild modifications, make 1 big loaf)

Ingredients:
Soaker
- 1.75 cup whole wheat flour
- 0.5 teaspoon (tp) table salt
- 3 + 1/2 tablespoon (TB) buttermilk powder
- 0.75 cup + 2 TB water

Biga

- 1.75 cups grocery store brand unbleached bread flour
- 1/4+1/8 tp active dry yeast
- 1/2 cup + 2 TB tap water
Final dough
- all of the soaker
- all of the biga
- 3.5 TB whole wheat flour
- 1/4+1/8 tp table salt
- 3 tp active dry yeast
- 2+1/4 TB honey
- 1 TB olive oil
- 1.5 TB extra whole wheat flour

Procedure:

Day 1

1. Soaker: Mix the soaker ingredients together in a bowl until all of the flour is hydrated and the ingredients form a ball of dough. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and allow to stay at room temperature for 12 hours.
2. Biga: Mix the biga ingredients in a bowl to form a ball of dough. Use spoon or wet hand to knead the dough in the bowl until the flour is fully hydrated. The dough is dry at first, but would slowly become tacky. Let the dough rest for 5 minutes, then knead it again for 1 minute. The dough will become smoother but still be tacky. Cover tightly with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 8 hours.

Day 2

1. Remove biga from the fridge and allow to warm up in room temperature for at least 2 hours.
2. Prepare the dry ingredients of the final dough in a large bowl.
3. Tear up the biga and the soaker into small pieces. Mix with the dry ingredients until incorporated. Then add the honey and oil. Knead for 15 minutes. The dough should be soft and sticky.
4. Allow dough to rest for a few minutes while greasing a clean bowl for dough to rise.
5. Resume kneading the dough until it has become smooth and strong. Place it in the greased bowl, cover loosely with plastic wrap and allow to rise at room temperature until 1.5 times its original size.
6. Carefully detach dough from the bowl and transfer it to a greased loaf pan. Allow to rest at room temperature until it is 1.5 times its original size.
7. While the dough is resting, top with cooked wheat berries. If desired to top with oat bran, sprinkle water on top of dough first and then sprinkle the bran.
8. Preheat oven to 450F while waiting for dough to finish its rest.
9. Score dough with a sharp knife dipped in water.
10. Place loaf pan into middle rack of oven. Adjust heat setting to 350F. Bake for 20 minutes. Then Rotate the loaf 180 degrees and continue baking for another 20 minutes, until the loaf is a rich brown on all sides, sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom.
11. Transfer loaf to a cooling rack and allow to cool for at least 1 hour before slicing.
12. Freeze leftover slices in plastic wrap and plastic bag.

Results:

Day 1

10:30pm. Mixing soaker ingredients:

10:35pm. Soaker mixed:

10:46pm, mixing biga ingredients:

11:11pm, biga kneaded with a spoon to form a smooth tacky ball:

11:13pm, biga ready to chill in the fridge, and soaker ready to rest on the counter overnight:

Day 2
9:04am, biga (still in fridge) and soaker in the morning of day 2:

3:25pm, biga (after warming up for 3 hours) and soaker just before mixing the final dough:

3:29pm, texture of the biga just before mixing:

3:43pm, biga torn into small pieces and added to dry ingredients of the final dough:

3:45pm, texture of the soaker just before mixing:

3:47pm, soaker torn into small pieces and added to biga and dry ingredients of the final dough:

3:52pm, initial texture of the final dough:

4:01pm, final dough after 15 minutes of kneading:

4:05pm, final dough after 1-2 minutes of rest, followed by a little more kneading:

4:08pm, final dough preparing to rise in an oiled bowl at room temperature (70-72F):

4:08pm, leftover extra whole wheat flour, about 1-2 TBs:

4:20pm, size of final dough after 15 minutes of rising:

4:35pm, size of final dough after 30 minutes of rising:

4:57pm, size of final dough after 50 minutes of rising:

5:03pm, final dough after being detached from the plastic wrap using some water:

5:04pm, texture of the final dough after rising:

5:06pm, with minimum handling, final dough poured into a greased loaf pan:

5:11pm, cooked wheat berries added as toppings while final dough is proofing in loaf pan:

5:23pm, water sprinkled and oat bran added as toppings while final dough is proofing in loaf pan:

5:35pm, final dough scored with a sharp knife after it has expanded to 1.5 times its original size in half an hour:

5:37pm, height of the final dough just before entering the oven:

Oven preheated to 450F. 

5:37pm, final dough just entered the oven, oven temperature adjusted to 350F:

5:58pm, loaf after 20 minutes of baking:

6:21pm, loaf coming fresh out of the oven after 40 minutes of baking:

6:21pm, height of loaf when freshly out of the oven:

6:22pm, bottom of loaf when freshly out of the oven:

6:24pm, top of loaf when freshly out of the oven:

7:24pm, loaf after 1 hour of cooling:

7:27pm, softness of loaf when sliced:

7:32pm, a center slice of the loaf:

7:32pm, an end slice of the loaf:

7:32pm, 19 thin slices yielded from 1 loaf:

Observations:

1. In this experiment, I almost follow Peter Reinhart's recipe exactly, except that I use active dry yeast (and thus more quantity of it). This experiment is also very similar to my previous experiment on an oat bran bread, except that the other one used 100% unbleached white flour, with some wheat berries and oat brans inside the crumb. 
2. The whole wheat flour is coarsely ground. The whole wheat bread, indeed, tastes heavier and coarser than the white bread. The previous white bread has a sweet soft taste, while this whole wheat bread is more flavorful. I think this bread rises less than the white one because of the flour. On the other hand, (since by mistake I had used the same amount of water for my previous white bread,) my previous bread had a much lighter color than this one on all sides and the bottom. I think one reason is that my previous bread had a lot more water waiting to evaporate.
3. The crust of this bread is much drier than the white bread. In fact, when I slice this loaf, a lot of oat bran and wheat berries fall off because the crust is hard. It might mean that if I want moister bread, then I should try to reduce the baking time by 5 minutes next time. 
4. Since I use such a huge amount of yeast, the bread has no problem rising to the big pillow size I've desired. I've figured that grocery store breads probably acquire their huge sizes because of the large amount of yeast. 
5. With these past two experiments, I have no problem at all slicing the bread into very thin slices. In fact, one loaf can yield 18-19 slices, which is as good as what I'd get for grocery-store a sandwich loaf. I like it this way because it gives me better control over the nutrition of each slice.
6. During the overnight fermentation, the biga has expanded even in the fridge. Its speed of expansion increases after it is moved from the fridge to the counter to warm up.

Conclusions:
It looks like Peter Reinhart's recipes work pretty well for white flour as well and whole wheat one. The thing I really like is the large slices with light and soft texture. The grains and bran inside the crumb make the bread so flavorful! Eventually I might move completely into his whole wheat recipes.