My third baking lesson: Peter Reinhart's oat bran broom bread

Now I'm really serious about baking bread. Here is my third baking experiment, again on a snow day. This snow storm is going to last two full days. So is the making of this bread. Short of whole bread flour, I use unbleached all-purpose flour as a substitute for now. I also use active dry yeast instead of instant yeast, thus the amount of yeast used is increased by at least 20% of the original recipe. 

Oat bran broom bread (make 1 large loaf, adapted from Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads)

Ingredients:
soaker
- 1+1/3 cup + 1 TB unbleached grocery store brand all-purpose flour
- 1/4 cup oat bran
- 2.5 TB cooked wheat berries
- 1/2 tp table salt
- 3/4 cup + 2 TB water
biga
- 1+3/4 cups unbleached grocery store brand all-purpose flour
- 1/4+1/8 tp active dry yeast
- 3/4 cup water, warm to the hand
final dough
- all the soaker
- all the biga
- 7 TB unbleached grocery store brand all-purpose flour
- 5/8 tp table salt
- 3 tp active dry yeast
- 2+1/4 TB honey
- 1 TB olive oil
- about 1/4 to 1/3 cup extra unbleached all-purpose flour


Procedure:

Day 1:

1. Mix all dry ingredients of the soaker ingredients together in a bowl. Then add in water and wheat berries. Mix for about 1 minute, until all of the flour is hydrated and the ingredients form a ball of dough.
2. Cover the soaker loosely with plastic wrap and allow to sit at room temperature for 12-24 hours.
3. Add 1/4 cup of warm water to the active dry yeast and allow to sit for 10 minutes.
4. Prepare a bowl of warm water handy.
5. Mix the proofed dry yeast mixture, the remaining water with the flour in a bowl about 4x the volume of the ingredients. If the mixture sticks to the spatula, dip the spatula into warm water and resume mixing.
6. Wet hand in the warm water. Then knead the dough in the large bowl for 2 minutes to be sure all of the ingredients are evenly distributed and the flour is fully hydrated. The dough should feel very sticky (tacky). Let the dough rest for 5 minutes, then knead it again with wet hands for 1 minute. The dough will become smoother but still be stacky.
7. Transfer the dough to a clean bowl, cover tightly with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 8 hours and up to 3 days.

Day 2:

1. Take biga from the refrigerator to the counter to warm up, 2 hours before making the dough.
2. Mix all of the dry final dough ingredients except for the extra flour in a large bowl. Tear the soaker and biga into small parts. Add the soaker and biga pieces into the large bowl and mix vigorously. Then add honey and oil. Stir the mixture using a spoon, or mix with hand, until the mixture becomes "tacky". Add flour or water to adjust as needed. This takes about 30 minutes.
3. Tacky means moist but cohesive, like a post-it that is able to pull off from the surface of the container/hand.
4. Lightly oil a clean bowl. Transfer dough to the bowl and allow to rest. Let rise at room temperature until it is about 1.5 times its original size, taking about 30-45 minutes.
5. Because the dough is very moist and fluid at this point, pour dough into another bowl. Pour it back once to achieve the effect of stretching and folding. If dough sticks to the surface, it can be easily pulled off with the fingers.
6. Coat a 4"x8.5" loaf pan with margarine. Then Pour fluid into loaf pan.
7. To add wheat berries as toppings, make sure that the wheat berries are moist, just sprinkle on top. To add oat bran as topping, sprinkle water generously on the surface of dough, then sprinkle oat bran.
8. Allow dough to proof at room temperature until it is about 1.5 times its original size again.
9. Preheat oven to 450F. Place loaf in middle rack. Adjust temperature to 350F. Bake for 20 minutes. Then rotate the loaf 180 degrees and continue baking for another 20-30 minutes.
10. Transfer to bread to a cooling rack and allow it to cool for at least 1 hour before serving.

Result:

Day 1

Wheat berries, soaked for half a day and cooked for half an hour, in preparation for the soaker:

Soaker is mixed in a bowl:

Texture of the biga when it is just mixed with warm water:

Texture of biga after 2 minutes of the first round of kneading with wet hand:

Texture of biga after 5 minutes of rest:

Texture of biga after 1 minute of the second round of kneading with wet hand:

The look of the soaker (left) and the biga (right) just before they both are ready to rest for the rest of the day (4pm):

After 4 hours, biga (left) has not grown much in size in the fridge, soaker (right) looks about the same on the counter:

Day 2

9:02am. Biga is taken out of the fridge to allow to warm up on the counter.

Unfortunately, I have no time to do the bread until afternoon. Biga has expanded after being left on the counter for 6 hours.

3:18pm. That's how the soaker and the biga look just before I start working on the dough:

3:32pm. Texture of the soaker:

3:34pm. Texture of the biga:

3:46pm. Initial texture of the final dough mixture when the dry ingredients are mixed with the soaker and the biga:

3:58pm. Texture of the final dough after about 20-30 minutes of kneading. It can hardly stand on its own, but when pulled, it tends to pull away from the bowl.

4:08pm. Texture of the final dough before rest:

4:08pm. Size of the final dough when it is just placed into an oiled bowl to rest:

4:24pm. Size of the final dough after 16 minutes of rest:

4:45pm. Size of the final dough after 37 minutes of rest:

4:47pm. Texture of the final dough after rest:

4:55pm. Because the final dough is so sticky, I cannot put it together into a ball. So I pour it into another vessel and pour it back to achieve some effect of folding and stretching. Final dough poured into the greased loaf pan, getting ready to proof before baking:

5:02pm. I decide to add some wheat berries as toppings on the loaf while it is proofing. The wheat berries are cooked and very moist. So no additional water needed:

5:13pm. I decide to add oat bran to the loaf while it is proofing. Because the oat bran is very dry, I need to sprinkle a lot of water onto the loaf first before adding the oat bran:

5:25pm. Size of the final dough 30 minutes after it starts proofing:

5:25pm. Final dough is scored with a knife. I don't have a razor, so I use a fruit knife and dip it into water to prevent sticking.

5:26pm. Last look of the final dough, after it's all ready for baking.

5:26pm. Height of the final dough just before it is baked:

Initial temperature of the oven is 450F. Once the loaf is in, the temperature is adjusted to 350F.

5:49pm. Loaf has been placed into the oven for 20 minutes. It is rotated 180 degrees. Baking continues.

6:08pm. Oat bran loaf has been baked for 40 minutes. 

6:08pm. The first look of oat bran bread when it comes freshly out of the oven.

6:11pm. Height of the oat bran bread is about 4.5 inches when it is freshly baked. I think the oven spring is so strong primarily for two reasons: (1) the use of 3 teaspoons of dry yeast, (2) the use of unbleached all-purpose flour instead of whole wheat flour.

6:13pm. Bottom of the oat bran bread.

7:10pm. Slicing the loaf after 1 hour of cooling. Crust is thin and crispy.

7:13pm. Loaf has a very soft, light, sponge-like crumb:

7:18pm. The loaf is so "friendly" to the knife that it yields 18 thin, sandwich-sized slices. This is the type of bread I have been longing to know how to make! The slice on the left front side is at the end of the loaf, the slice on the right front is at the center of the loaf.

7:20pm. Texture of an end-of-loaf slice:

7:24pm. Texture of a center-of-loaf slice:

Day 3. To understand how the bread changes with time, I save some slices in the freezer and leave some on the counter overnight. Here is the observation in the morning. On the left is an end-of-loaf slice, which is left on the counter. On the right is a center-of-loaf slice that is frozen in plastic wrap.

Lessons learnt:

1. A wet dough produces a crumb with big holes.
2. Water on the surface of the loaf enables the loaf to develop a nice crust and a big oven spring, because the moisture prevents the top from drying while the yeast is very active in the oven.
3. When using all-purpose unbleached flour in place of whole wheat flour, less water is needed because there is no bran and germ in the flour to absorb the water.
4. Soaker and biga enables the development of gluten without too much kneading. 
5. The taste of salt and honey is very well blended in this bread, and is not very distinctive.
6. The color of the crumb is light brown. It may be contributed by the honey. In my two previous experiments with white bread, no honey was used, and I got a plain milky white color. 
7. Even though a large amount of yeast is used in this recipe, the resultant bread does not have a beer taste because the fermentation time is short.
8. Though I did not use whole wheat flour, the bread tasted as if it had some whole grain. That's because of the oat bran and the wheat berries.
9. In making this loaf, the hardest part is to understand how to knead the dough, and how to assess its texture. I would not have made it without watching Peter Reinhart's video on handling wet dough with wet hands. Tackiness is a hard concept to grasp without actually seeing and touching the dough. I begin to understand what artisanal means. Some skills really needs to be learnt through apprenticeship. 

Epilog

When the loaf came out of the oven, my husband just woke up from his afternoon nap. The sweet aroma of oat and wheat led him into the kitchen. When he saw the loaf that was freshly out of the oven, he took a deep breath with a big grin. I told my husband that he'd no longer have to endure my white loaves. He said he thought my white loaves were great, but it's always better to be better! I love his comment so much. 

This fresh bread warmed our hearts greatly after a day of digging ourselves out of 2 feet of snow. Though my husband normally isn't a bread enthusiast, he does have a very fine taste for good food. Today, he stuffed himself up with one more slice even after dinner was over. This is a true success!