This wasn’t supposed to be a full-length post. I was just going to re-do Mom Gorman’s Hot Rolls that Barb did back in October, but using whole wheat instead of white flour. But apparently I’ve got a bad case of what a former editor called “shutter diarrhea”. I just kept shooting pictures.
Along the way, and in a bit of research afterwards, I learned quite a bit about baking with whole wheat. And now I have something to try for next time.
Ingredients
Barb didn’t mention when she listed the ingredients that it was a double recipe. If you look at the size of the pan she used it should have been obvious. I’m apparently not a master of the obvious. It’s a good thing I had two 9″ pans instead of just the one. I’m listing the single recipe amounts here.
1 cup milk
1/2 cup butter (Barb called for Crisco)
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup sugar + 2 teaspoons
1/4 cup warm water (115°F)
1 package yeas (2-1/2 teaspoons)
1 egg, beaten
“Enough” flour to make dough
(about 3 to 4 cups — depends on humidity)
Directions
Go back to Barb’s post for all the details. I’m just going to have a few shots here.
Remember when I said that Barb’s was a double recipe? This is what 8 cups of flour looks like.
That’s my largest mixing bowl. Trust me, that’s a lot of flour.
When the yeast blooms it can grow a lot. Make sure you have it in a big-enough bowl.
As soon as I added the butter and the yeast to the flour, I could see the bowl on my mixer was very full.
Even on low, the flour kept trying to fly out of the bowl.
Here’s how full two 9-inch pie plates were using the amounts listed in Barb’s version. The most important part of this step, other than greasing the pans well, is getting all the balls of dough close to the same size. You can see that my wife and I were doing different sizes, but within each pan they matched.
The butter on top of the rolls makes a huge difference on white bread. On these, I don’t think it made much of a difference.
The wheat bread came out much denser than a white bread made the same way, and it had a distinctive nutty flavor. I could really see this working well in a nut bread, like banana or zucchini bread with nuts.
Next time I do the wheat rolls, I want them to be a bit lighter. And I found a great explanation of how to make wheat bread lighter in texture. The short version is to mix the bloomed yeast with half the flour, then let it soak for several hours before adding the rest of the flour and kneading. Follow that link for the explanation of why this works.
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12 Comments
Yeah, I can never substitute whole wheat flour for all the white flour in a recipe. Too dense for me. I usually do about 2/3 white and a third wheat. That’s about the limit before the texture changes significantly. But I’ll be interested to see what this method is you discovered to make whole wheat lighter.
But Kristin … you don’t bake. How can you have a “usually” if you don’t do it occasionally? And by the way, the description of the method is at that link. It might be a couple of weeks before I try it. We’ve still got some of this batch in the freezer.
Mostly I speak of biscuits. Which is about all I DO bake, because I make the baking powder kind that a trained monkey could make, and I have the recipe memorized. But other than that, no. I don’t bake if I can avoid it.
My recipe is a double batch? I didn’t know that! It’s never enough! lol
Do you like those rubber basting brushes? I’ve only tried mine once and, since it’s a new concept, I haven’t adjusted my attitude toward it yet!
Remember I said somewhere we have similar stuff? Your pot with the wooden handle looks like my collection of old pots… I’m not home right now to tell you the name but I’ll do that this weekend.
And I think I’ll try making wheat bread this weekend, too.
So I’ve only made one loaf of bread from scratch and that was a few weeks ago. I’ve been deathly afraid of yeast for years. At points I think I needed a support group because I wanted to try it so bad, but just knew I’d screw it up. Well, thank you food blogs for giving me courage and step by step instructions! That loaf I made turned out pretty darn good and when I saw this today I thought this will go great with the vegetable beef barely stew I’ve got slow cooking in the oven. At first I thought I would do half and half on the flours until I found I only had one cup of white left! (where did that 10 lb bag I bought GO!?). So the mix I did was 1C white, 2C white whole wheat and 1C whole wheat. I’m also flirting with failure by using rapid rise yeast because it’s all I have so I followed the instructions for using that and it’s on the oven now and it’s actually rising! Miracles do happen people. So I’ll bake them for dinner tonight and report back!
Sorry to ramble on. There’s just something about dough rising that gets me excited. LOL
Barb, most biscuit and dinner roll recipes I see call for a single 9-inch pie plate. That huge cake pan you’re using? That’s just crazy big.
I like the silicone brush. I can clean it up without pulling the bristles out. It also works well for barbecue sauce. I tried that once with a bristle pastry brush. Had to throw it out when I was done.
Oh, and I think the pots are “Aluminum Club”. Has a club — like on playing cards — logo on the bottom.
April, they’re going to be great with beef stew. And I know how you feel about seeing it rise. I keep checking like every five minutes … “Is it rising yet? I’m not sure. Was the water too warm? Not warm enough? Ooh, ooh, it’s rising!”
People have been baking bread for thousands of years. It’s not like it’s some big accomplishment or anything.
I made bread a week ago or so using the method in your link. It was a honey bread almost identical to the one I’d always used, except it used milk instead of water and mixed half the flour in with the yeast right away. That bread was unbelievably tender, and I ate so many rolls hot out of the oven I gave myself a tummy ache.
Fantastic! I’m so excited I made rolls that didn’t turn out like hockey pucks. They were excellent with my stew and super tasty with butter and honey on them for dessert.
Melissa, stop telling me that. I already said I can’t make more until we finish what’s in the freezer. Now you’re making me want it again.
April, woo woo! Awesome. And honey, that’s what they needed.
Drew, you mentioned the freezer. Did you freeze some after cooking? I’m not versed in freezing any type of bread, but with just two of us there is no way we’ll eat all these in a couple days. Any suggestions?
I’m using zip-top freezer bags. Make sure you get as much air out of the bag as possible.
Don’t try thawing and re-freezing, but otherwise you should be okay.
Thanks Drew!