Adventures in Multi-grain Bread

Cafe Society
1

I have lots of bread recipes, but mostly I come back to the most basic one, the one that never fails me, written by My Boyfriend, Mark Bittman: 3 cups flour, 2 teasppons salt, 2 teaspoons instant or bread-machine yeast, 1 + 1/4 cups water, mush together, cover, rise 30 mins - 1 hour, bake 425F.

But, you know, all that white flour isn’t good for you blah bah blah. So I’ve been fooling with the recipe, because while I’m not crazy about the flavor of “whole wheat” bread, I like the taste of “multi-grain” bread.

So today’s recipe went as follows:
1 cup unbleached allpurpose white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2-3 heaping Tablespoons oat flour (I took some oatmeal I had and ground it in a coffee grinder)
2 heaping Tablespoons Rye flour
1 heaping Tablespoon Buckwheat flour (I’ve noticed you have to be careful with buckwheat or the flavor overpowers everything)
1 heaping Tablespoon ground flax (coffee grinder again)
1 Tablespoon dry milk (on a whim, cause I had it)
4-5 grinds of fresh black pepper
2-3 tablespoons of parmesan-romano grated cheese

Things I had, but didn’t put in there: cornmeal, ground almonds, sesame seeds.

It came out pretty good. It needed more water than plain bread does, but it pulled together and rose normally. The coarse ground oat and flax gave it a pretty good texture. Didn’t taste too “whole wheaty.” Might have needed extra salt, if not for the parmesan cheese. Tasty with my roast beef sandwhich. It got a little overbrown on the bottom at 425F. Overall, my experimental 5-grain bread was deemed a success.

So, any thoughts? Areas for improvement? I read the labels on my multi-grain products to see what grains they use. What think you of spelt or quinoa (in case you’re wondering, therte’s a Mennonite market where I can get this sort of thing)? Or ground walnuts or hazelnuts?

Tell me, children, of your own adventures in bread baking.

2

You put black pepper in bread? How are you going to make a peanut buter and jelly sandwich out of that?

Flax and oats can both go in without being ground. Gives more texture to the bread.

Try some barley. Barley is yummy. Small amounts also do not have to be ground and will provide nice little chewy nuggets. Larger amount would need to be ground.

3

LOL, I don’t like peanut butter and I’m off high-sugar condiments. My sandwhiches are savory in nature 98% of the time. The bread was actually for some roast beef sandwhiches.

Barley, huh? I do see barley malt in a lot of the multigrain breads.

4

Barley malt is not barley. Barley malt is a sugar made from barley.

I, too, would have left the oats whole.

As far as what to leave out or put in, sorry. I just use wheat flours (both whole and white), oats, and corn meal in my breads! I’m not very adventurous in that respect.

5

Malted barley is barley that has been soaked in water, let sprout a little, and then dried to kill the plant. This converts some of the starches into complex sugars as the plant begins to use the starch. This is used in some recipes and is moderately healthy as it still a whole grain.

Barley malt is made by taking the malted barley, crushing it slightly to break the hulls, and steeping it in water at specific temperatures to let enzymes complete the conversion of starches and complex sugars into simple sugars. The sugars leech out into the water and make a sugar syrup. This is then dried and sold as malt powder, used to make beer and malted milkshakes. This is also used in some recipes, and is healthy if you consider it a subsitute for white sugar, but not healthy if you substitute it for whole wheat.

Regular barley is just the barley kernels that are a nice nutty chewy grain. It is sometimes sold rolled like oats.

BoringMom also just recommended wheat berries for the same effect. They are the unground wheat kernels. I personally like the barley a little more, but wheat berries are a little less chewey.