Monday, March 12, 2012

Recycled: Multi-Grain Bread

Old burblings, re-burbled...

So I mentioned a while back that I'd cracked my white bread recipe...

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7 - 15g Fresh Yeast (depending on freshness of yeast and what it has to rise, mostly I use about 10g)
250ml water
480g White bread flour
2 - 5g salt (depending on who I'm making the bread for. Less salt for us, but more for guests as it tastes nicer)

I do the first knead and rise in the breadmaker, then knock down, put in bread tins, second rise in a barely warm oven (be able to touch the inside of the door without burning hand) and cook.

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I'm getting a nicely risen, light white loaf every time with this method.

So, having got that under my belt I wanted to move on to wholemeal and multi-grain.  Wholemeal has caused me many issues in the past (have offered mumndad wholemeal loaves to use instead of bricks for house - they'd last longer).  Multi-grain however has been a complete unknown, and when I was in the health food shop on Monday and picked up some whole grains.

I soaked a cup of mixed grains overnight in buttermilk.  I only used buttermilk because we had some leftover, and I read somewhere it was a good thing to soak them in, otherwise it'd have been water.

I added a (very approximate) cup of soaked grain to my usual recipe above and voila...

A first try, bread baking success.  A light loaf with lots of lovely nutty chewy grains.  Simple and delicious.

Rather chuffed actually.  Bread is not known for turning out well at the first try (or the one thousand and thirty fifth).

A lot of people ask me where I buy my fresh yeast.  At the big deli outside Woolies in Hornsby - which isn't much help to anyone except locals. But fresh yeast is almost always stocked by big delis.  It's very rarely on display, so you have to ask.  Using fresh yeast, that doesn't have a predictable rise cycle like packet yeast, means that you can't really just bung your bread into the breadmaker and forget it.  I find the first rise is a lot slower, up to an hour more, which is why I complete the breadmaking in the oven.

 Still, if I throw everything in the breadmaker to knead and rise before I do the school run in the morning, we will have fresh baked bread for lunch.

:)