All my life, I have been a staunch supporter of all purpose flour when it comes to baking bread. It makes a lovely light loaf and easily beats all other flours in terms of taste. Call it destiny or old age, of late I have started enjoying whole wheat loaves a lot. I love the chewy texture and the flavour it brings along. Though I still maintain that the case against all purpose flour is mostly making a mountain of a molehill, whole wheat flour features a lot more in my breads these days.

 

If you remember, I had written about how imperative it is for me to finish a pack of wheat bran that I had bought and forgotten. So I have been trying to add it to many bread loaves just to get done with it. I have significantly modified the whole wheat sandwich loaf recipe from the New Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes. So I figured this is a good loaf I could add bran to. I also topped it with some seeds to get the daughter to eat them. Both these ingredients are optional and the bran does make it a comparatively dense loaf but it is a healthier loaf and the little extra dense-ness is a small price to pay. Else it can be replaced by whole wheat flour. I forget about the dough during proofing and ended up over proofing it which can be seen in the loaf. So don’t do that and bake the loaf at the appropriate time.

 

Makes one 8″ loaf

WHAT WE NEED

140 gms All purpose flour

110 gms Whole wheat flour

30 gms Wheat bran

1 1/2 tsp Salt

1 tsp Instant yeast

26 gms Honey

20 gms Oil

226 gms Warm water

Mix of seeds

 

WHAT TO DO

• Mix all the ingredients except the seeds and form a dough
• Cover and let it rise till it flattens or collapses which should take around 2 hours
• Refrigerate for 2-3 hours
• Take out the dough and sprinkle some flour on it and shape it like a ball by pulling the dough back on all 4 sides
• Grease an 81/2″ * 4 1/2 ” pan
• Pull the dough to form an oval shape and drop it in the loaf pan
• Cover and let it rest for 90 minutes
• Preheat the oven at 250C with an empty tray at the lowest rack
• Sprinkle some flour and slash the dough on top
• Pour 1 cup hot water on the empty tray in the oven
• Bake the loaf on the middle rack for 50-55 minutes till it is richly brown
• Let it cool completely on a wire rack before slicing
• Enjoy!

 

This is part of the Bake-a-thon 2017