60% Whole Wheat with Oatmeal and Chia Seeds

Baking bread is something of a hobby for me.  It's one of the reasons I could never become a "Paleo" dieter - grains are off the menu.  The reasoning seems sound, but frankly I like grains and legumes and that is that.

Anyway, today I made my first original recipe bread.  I'm actually sure it's not original, but I don't have a recipe for it, rather I applied techniques I've learned by baking from the book Bread.  That book isn't for everyone, but it sits squarely in my wheelhouse going into meticulous detail and teaching why a baker would do something.  It's written more for the professional baker, but I have found that it suits for my kneeds.

One of the reasons I like the book so well, the recipes are all written to scale; every amount is given for large batch cooking, home baking and as a percentage of the total weight of flour.  That means that if you use 1 kilogram of flour and a recipe calls for 68% water, you know you need 680 grams (or ml) of water.  Guess work gone.  That's tremendous.

Here's the recipe, I'd give cups and tablespoons, but I use a scale because of the variability in weight of a cup of flour.

Prefermented Flour.
300g Whole Wheat Flour
200g Bread Flour
3g Yeast
500g Water

Simply mix the ingredients above in a bowl and let them sit on the counter overnight.  It's likely you'll see a ring indicating the dough inflated and deflated overnight.

Soaker.
150g Rolled Oats
50g Chia Seeds
40g 24g Salt
180g Water

This also got mixed the night before.  Use hot water, allow to cool on the counter, then stick in the fridge.

Final Dough.
300g Whole Wheat Four
200g Bread Flour
90g Water
50g Honey
Soaker
Pre-ferment

Combine all of the above ingredients together in a bowl and kneed for a while.  (I usually look for 10 minutes of 600 strokes whichever comes first.  The gluten will develop more as the dough rises.)

I let the dough rise for probably 2.5 hours and I folded it twice during the rise.  Your results may vary depending on the temperature of your house. Once risen, preshape the dough into rounds and then form whatever type of loaf you like.  Pan loaves, I like hearth loaves, rounds...

The final rise took this dough 1.5 hours during which time I ran a couple of errands.

Cook in a hot oven with a pan of boiling water on the bottom shelf.  The recipes I used suggested 450 degrees, but my oven has temperature marked out as 5,4,3,2, and 1.  I had the setting on 4.  Bake for 40 or so minutes and allow to cool before cutting.  The hardest part.

I can report that this bread is delicious and the chia seeds give a really nice texture to the bread.

Thanks for reading and feel free to send me your bread recipes, I'd like to see what you like.
J