Bread - Number 29: Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread

Bread - Number 30: Wimpy and confusing

This whole wheat honey molasses bread is an adapted recipe from the Art of Baking with Natural Yeast. A nice taste, but again I find myself contemplating that kneading instruction would be helpful.

Warning: This recipe might be irritating. I converted a non-preferment recipe to make a sponge and then only partially made the switch from volume measurements to weight measurements.

Ingredients in recipe
1 1/4 cups water (I used cold water because my kitchen was very warm)
1/8 cup honey
1/8 cup molasses
3 1/2 to 4 cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp salt

Sponge
3 oz. water
4.5 oz. starter
2.5 oz. white whole wheat flour
(Used cold water and little starter to slow down sponge development in a warm summer kitchen)

Dough
Add starter to:
7 oz. water
1/8 cup honey
1/8 cup molasses
3 to 3 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour
1 tsp salt

Refeeding the sponge
In a very warm, summer kitchen, the sponge was flat at nine hours, so I fed it with part of the upcoming dough ingredients - 2 ounces of water and 2 oz. of flour. The sponge appeared much happier and bubbly afterwards. Otherwise, I would have wasted the sponge.

I also made an autolyse by combining the remaining flour and water and leaving that to sit alone for 20 minutes, lightly covered. I then mixed the rest of the dough ingredients with the autolyse and the sponge.

I allowed the mixed dough to rest for 10 minutes and then kneaded for 10 minutes. Still lack confidence in my kneading. I also wondered whether my months-old white whole wheat flour would perform well. Though the recipe called for a rise of six to 12 hours, mine seemed ready in two - maybe the warm kitchen, maybe a misjudgment, maybe the sponge stage altered the need for a long rise at this stage.

Did a stretch and fold and left the dough loosely covered by plastic on a board for 12 minutes. Put the dough in a non-stick sprayed loafpan for a final rise of two to two and a half hours. At one hour, I preheated the oven to 475 degrees. I used a la cloche over the loafpan and baked the bread for 31 minues.

Unsatisfied with the result. I do not think the dough rose sufficiently and I do not know exactly why. The taste was decent, chewey. This is worth a second try. The post will be updated accordingly.