Experienced Bakers: Your Thought Here?

[Willy]

Any of you experienced bread bakers want to take a crack at the formula for Dave’s Killer Good Seed bread (the yellow bag). It is, imho, the best commercial bread I’ve ever eaten—makes great toast--and I’d love to be able to make it for less than the $6 per loaf store price. The ingredients are given as:

Whole wheat (cracked WW, WW flour)
Water
Wheat flour
Seed mix (flax, sunflower, ground flax, brown and black sesame)
Sugar
Gluten--does not specify vital wheat gluten
Steel cut oats
Molasses
Yeast
Oat fiber
Salt
Cultured WW
Vinegar

It’s mainly the first three (four) ingredients that I’m looking to quantify with the baker’s percentage and what puzzles me is that cracked wheat appears to be the largest ingredient by weight. I’d maybe guess 75%-80% WW, 70%--75% water and 20%-25% wheat flour, with cracked wheat being a small part (5%-10%) of the 75% WW. Are ingredients within parentheses not necessarily required to appear in order of predominance?

Comments and thoughts are appreciated.

[RonB]

I suggest going to King Arthur Flour, then the recipe section. You can pull up whole wheat recipes and look at a bunch. That will give you an idea what % of each of the main ingredients you can use, (ww, apf, H2O, sugar, molasses, yeast, salt). You can also look at ww recipes from any pro baker you trust. I've never used oat fiber, cultured ww or vinegar, so I have no idea for those ingredients.

Ingredients like cracked wheat, seed mix, and steel cut oats I normally soak so they can absorb water, then I drain as well as I can. I think doing that has less effect on hydration than using them dry. Also, I'd rather err on the side of a little too much water than have the dough too dry. You can add as much of these ingredients as you'd like. It seems to me that I added about 60 G of mixed seeds per 9 X 5 loaf pan. Check to see if the steel cut oats are in the bread or a topping for the loaf. I wouldn't soak if used as a topping.
Most recipes suggest using 1 tbs of vital wheat gluten for every 2-3 cups of flour. I normally add according to the amount of ww flour in a recipe at the above ratio.

Obviously, you want to take lots of notes so that you can adjust the recipe if necessary.

Good luck.

[Willy]

Thanks! What do you make of the fact that cracked wheat appears to be the number one ingredient? BTW, I just got Reinhart's whole grain bread book from the library and am starting to digest it.

[RonB]

Cracked wheat is not flour - it's small pieces of wheat. I'd soak it, drain it, and treat it as an additive like seeds, (but I've never used it, so you might want to do a little research). Examine a piece of bread closely and see if you can detect the cracked wheat. I know that ingredients are listed in descending quantities, but I wouldn't worry too much about it the first time. Get the bread part worked out first and then worry about the quantities for the rest.
I assume you want to make sandwich loaves, and if so, you need to decide what size pan(s) to use. Here's a link to a King Arthur page discussing pan size, and yes, size does matter.

http://blog.kingarthurflour.com/2016/02/12/choosing-right-bread-pan/

[Strat50]

I find, with cracked wheat(and other grains as well), I like to cook them first, let them sit and steep for an hour, drain well and use. I use the King Arthur site as well. Great resource. There are are also a few good sites just for bread making such as Breadtopia and The Fresh Loaf, to name a few that have hundreds of recipes and techniques. They are the bread version of Amazing Ribs, and have a lot of nice folks there, just as we have. Why do I like 'em? They like fire too! lol

Many health-food stores and health sections of grocery stores sell bulk grains, and many have a mill where you can mill flour, grits, etc. Short of having your own grainmill(which is awesome to the 3rd power!), this will give you the freshest stuff with the best flavor. Since the nearest place to us with a mill, is 50 miles away, I got a grainmill, and haven't looked back since.

[Breadhead]

Willy ... if you go to StellaCulinary.com and post this exact question to Chef Jacob I bet you get a very detailed answer to your question and any follow up question that may be generated by his answer.

[Willy]

So, I let my inner geek really shine today regarding the content of the subject bread. First, online digging, where all of the recipes for bread that use cracked wheat call for it in a ratio typically around 1/2 cup CW to several cups flour. One site suggested that CW does contribute to a "light" loaf. Assuming the Dave's ingredient list on the bag is correct (and I'm sure it is), the minimum amount of CW in Dave's is 33.3% of the total "flour" (I know CW isn't actually flour) by weight--could be higher. Next, I learn that CW can be bought as a fine, medium, or coarse grind. I have some whole wheat berries, so I let them fly in a coffee grinder. I also let a piece of Dave's go stale and crumbled it so I can look at it more closely it, as a visual inspection of a whole slice doesn't show any thing but normal looking crumb and the seeds like sesame, sunflower, and flax. THEN, I break out the digital microscope (doesn't everyone own one?) and examine the crushed, dried bread and the homemade CW on the computer screen. Aha! Similarities between the two--white "crystals" in both samples, so I do think (not know fer shure) that Dave uses finely ground CW as at least 1/3 of his wheat total. Not really surprising given the ingredient list, but still odd (to me) from the perspective of a nice, airy loaf that contains so much that isn't flour.

Mock away!

[Breadhead]

Anything that isn't flour, water, yeast or salt... is added to change the taste or texture. The weight of those ingredients can very widely. You can substitute many things for the water ingredient but keep the hydration consistent. Let your creativity run wild. Play with it.

[Willy]

So, Breadhead, you don't find the fact that cracked wheat composes at least 50% of the amount of flour to be surprising?

[Breadhead]

Hmmm... I don't think crack wheat is flour. I think crack wheat should be treated as a seed, not flour. Could you eliminate the flour in your recipe and replace that weight with cracked wheat and get a loaf of bread?

[Willy]

@Breadhead--Agreed CW isn't flour, tho I think it needs to be thought of as such in terms of needing to be hydrated. And since CW isn't flour in terms of "holding the loaf together", I am wondering about the structural integrity of the loaf when the weight of CW is at least half that of the two flours. Look at the ingredients list and think of it in terms of baker's percentage, noting that CW + WWF must exceed the weight of the water and that the weight of CW is greater than that of WWF. WF comes in fourth BUT it could be significantly more than WWF since it's only CW PLUS WWF that weighs more than WF.

I've got a couple of ideas for a formula--I just need to find some fine CW--the coffee grinder doesn't hack it.

Here's one idea:

CW 60%
WWF 25%
H2O 80%
WF 75%

Another idea:CW 50%
WWF 40%
H2O 80%
WF 60%

The ratio between WWF and WF (which I am assuming is BF) could be played with quite a bit and the hydration could be jacked up or down, depending on how much water the CW sucks up.

[MBMorgan]

When I was doing a bit of research to support development of the Baker's Percentage Formula Calculator spreadsheet, I came across a number of conversations about whether to treat certain ingredients (like rolled oats and cracked wheat) as flour or something else. The overwhelming consensus is that flour, rolled oats, cracked wheat, etc., absorb significant amounts of water. They significantly affect hydration and therefore should be treated as "flour" for purposes of calculating hydration. To avoid confusion (oats and cracked wheat aren't really "flour"), the decision was made to treat them all as "grain".

Unfortunately, while various types of wheat and rye flour are pretty well understood in terms of how much water each tends to absorb, things like oats, cracked wheat, etc., are poorly understood and are therefore difficult to include into hydration calculations. That is why it is common to pre-soak (pre-hydrate) them so that when they are added, they are already fully hydrated and will therefore not significantly influence hydration of the dough.

[Willy]

Thanks and agree 100%! Nonetheless, in terms of an ingredients list, any water going into pre-hydrating would still need to be accounted for in the ingredient list.

This is going to be a fun challenge.

[Breadhead]

MBMorgan ... pre-hydration is the key, I agree. To get the weight of water absorbed by the pre-hydrated cracked wheat just weigh the CW before putting it in water. Then weigh it again when you remove it from the water. I really don't think that is necessary though.

[MBMorgan]

"Nonetheless, in terms of an ingredients list, any water going into pre-hydrating would still need to be accounted for in the ingredient list."

Willy Not really. A pre-hydrated ingredient (like CW) will not affect hydration of dry grain ingredients (like flour) because the pre-hydrated CW won't "steal" any water from the dough. Pre-hydration of some ingredients renders them "inert" (like seeds) and therefore they can be ignored when calculating dough hydration.

[Willy]

I'm speaking of the nutritional information list of ingredients, not the baker's percentage. I think the water used to pre-hydrate would be required by regulation to show up in that list.

[MBMorgan]

In the context of a nutritional full-disclosure ingredients list, I agree (assuming that regulations require water to be listed as an ingredient )

[RonB]

Willy - I'm not so sure you need to account for water absorbed by add ins. If you cracked wheat, (for instance), is fully hydrated, it should not absorb any more water. Just make sure you have drained as much water from the additives as possible after hydrating them. You might want to hold back a small amount of water because you can't remove all the excess water, but that should be a very small amount.

Oops - just read the two comments above...

[Breadhead]

The interesting part of this discussion is that we've got 4 guys on a BBQ website that know enough about making bread that we can have this discussion.👍 I'm sure there are more too. Strat50 knows a lot about making bread too.

[Steve Vojtek]

But it was You who was so selfless and willing to teach me. The credit goes to you mate. I appreciate it immensely.. I cannot buy bread this good in a shop that I know of....

[Breadhead]

You were teaching your dad to make the bread if I remember correctly. How did that work out?

[Steve Vojtek]

My dad is retired now and does a lot of traveling and camping. Enjoying himself after working hard all his life. Occasionally when he has time he "borrows" some of my starter to bake but rarely..He loves sourdough bread.

[Gooner-que]

Another reason this is the best forum on the web.

[Willy]

By Jove, I think I've got it! No, not the end solution, but a good starting point. "Euphoria" today until reality tomorrow sets in!

Here's the plan:

CW 50%
WWF 50%
H2O 100%
BF 50%
Sugar 6%
VWG 4%
Molasses 3%
Instant yeast 1.5%
Salt 1.5%
Vinegar 1%

I'll throw in about a quarter or half cup of various seeds and just omit the other ingredients for now as I don't have them. The 100% hydration may seem odd, but once CW is added as an ingredient in need of hydration, the actual hydration relative to flour plus CW is only 75% and, if this yields a too runny dough, it'll be easy to add more flour during the kneading stage. The CW will be pre-hydrated overnight using half of the allotted water.

We shall see.

[RonB]

Looking forward to the results Willy.

[Breadhead]

By Jove, I think I've got it! No, not the end solution, but a good starting point. "Euphoria" today until reality tomorrow sets in!

Here's the plan:

CW 50%
WWF 50%
H2O 100%
BF 50%
Sugar 6%
VWG 4%
Molasses 3%
Instant yeast 1.5%
Salt 1.5%
Vinegar 1%

I'll throw in about a quarter or half cup of various seeds and just omit the other ingredients for now as I don't have them. The 100% hydration may seem odd, but once CW is added as an ingredient in need of hydration, the actual hydration relative to flour plus CW is only 75% and, if this yields a too runny dough, it'll be easy to add more flour during the kneading stage. The CW will be pre-hydrated overnight using half of the allotted water.

We shall see.

I think what I would do is what MBMorgan suggested. Pre-hydrate the CW and don't calculate that ingredient into the hydration of the WW & Bread flour. If you must have the weight of the water in the CW just weigh the CW before and after putting it in the water.

Because 50% of your flour is WW, 75% hydration would be my minimum, assuming you're not counting the CW as anything but grain. 1 packet of instant yeast, 21/4tsp or 7 grams, is enough to rise 500 to 1000 grams of flour. That's going to be a pretty sweet bread having a combined sugar content at 9%.🤔 I've never used VWG and I'm not sure why you would need it when you're using 50% bread flour.

Good luck... I bet it comes out great! Take pictures.👍