Myrtle Allen's Brown Bread Introduction to Baking
To start with, this is NOT a sourdough recipe. It's just a very
nice bread recipe, included on the Sourdough Home web site to help beginning bakers get used to the mechanics of baking as part of our "Introduction to Bread Making" series of posts.
This recipe is from James Beard's "Beard On Bread." I've added to the instructions considerably, on the assumption that you, the reader, have not baked before. If you have baked before, I hope the voluminous instructions won't be too tedious.
This recipe makes one loaf, and will take about 5 minutes of preparation time, 1 1/2 hours of rising time, and about 50 minutes of baking time.
| Volumetric Measurement | Ingredient | Grams | Baker's Percentage (7) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 3/4 Cups | Whole Wheat Flour, preferably stone ground (1) | 488 Grams | 100% |
| 1 2/3 tsp | Salt | 10 Grams | 2% |
| 1 1/2 Packages (3 3/4 tsp) | Active Dry Yeast (2)(4)(5) | 10.5 Grams | 2.15% |
| 2 Cups | Warm Water (3) | 476 Grams | 97.54% |
| 2 TBSP | Molasses, Honey, Agave Syrup or Ribbon Cane Syrup (6) | 42 Grams | 8.6% |
Notes about the ingredients:
- Whole wheat flour goes rancid fairly quickly, so make sure you are getting fresh flour - buy a brand that moves quickly in your store.
- A package of yeast is about 2 1/2 teaspoons, so you need about 3 3/4 tsp of active dry yeast.
- Check the temperature of the water with a thermometer - if it is above 100F you run a very real risk of cooking, and killing, the yeast.
- If you prefer to use Instant yeast, use 1/2 as much as you would of Active Dry yeast, or about 2 tsp or 5.25 grams.
- Most recipes request that you proof active dry yeast. I have not found it necessary to do so.
- Many whole wheat recipes use a bit of sweetener to take the edge off the bitterness some people taste in whole wheat flour. You may use molasses, honey, agave syrup or ribbon cane syrup. Some people feel molasses imparts a heavy taste and makes the bread taste salty. If you prefer to not use honey and find molasses to be too heavy, agave syrup or ribbon cane syrup are very nice alternatives.
- Baker's percentage is something we'll explain later in the tutorial, and yes, it is correct that the total is more than 100% Stay tuned!
Method:
If you are using cups, measure the flour by using a tablespoon to fill a measuring cup, spoon by spoon until the cup is overly filled and then use a knife to level the cup and insure the cup is full, but not overly full. Put the whole wheat flour in a large mixing bowl. Add the salt and yeast. Stir together. If you are weighing your ingredients, put your bowl on a set of scales, tare the scales, add the amount of flour called for, tare the scales and add the salt, tare the scales again and add the amount of yeast called for.
Water and sweetener added
Let the mixing begin!
The glop is becoming a batter!
Mix the sweetener and water together. Pour the mixture into the bowl with the flour. Stir well. The resulting batter should be wet and sticky. If the batter seems too dry, add a bit more water. If it seems too wet, add some more flour. You shouldn't see any dry flour in the batter or bowl, and the batter shouldn't seem soupy.
Again, we are working on creating a batter, rather than a dough, so it should be fairly liquid. Because whole wheat flour varies a lot in its ability to absorb water, you may have to adjust the amount of flour you use. However, the recipe isn't too finicky and a bit too wet is better than a bit too dry. I added about 1/2 cup (60 grams) of additional flour when I made this batch of bread.
An oiled pan.
Spreading the batter in the pan.
The covered loaf
Spray a bread loaf pan with "Baker's Joy". Baker's Joy is a spray oil that has flour in it, so you are oiling and flouring your baking pan in one step. If you can't find Baker's Joy, there are other similar products such as "Baker's Secret" and Pam now has a spray oil that has flour in it. If you can't find any of these products, you can always oil your baking pan and dust it with a bit of flour.
Pour the batter into the oiled bread loaf pan. Smooth the surface with a wet spatula, spoon, or even moistened fingers. Cover with some cling wrap or a shower cap, and set the loaf aside in a warm place until it doubles in size, usually about 1 1/2 hours. Try to make sure the cover does not touch the batter, as the batter will stick to the cover and that will cause problems when you uncover the loaf.
About an hour and 15 minutes into the rise, put a rack in your oven into the lower third of the oven and start pre-heating your oven to 450F/230C. It will take most ovens about 15 to 20 minutes to heat up. Check your oven temperature with an oven thermometer - many ovens are as much as 50 degrees off. You can get a decent thermometer in most grocery stores for around $5.00.
Once the batter has risen, remove the cover from the loaf pan and put the loaf pan into the oven as quickly as possible. If you let the dough rise too much, the top may collapse, which is what happened on this loaf. It still tastes fine, but it isn't as pretty as we might hope.
Also, when the oven is open it will lose heat as long as the door is open. Once the loaf is in the oven and the oven door is closed, set a timer for 25 minutes.
When the timer goes off, open the oven door, look at the bread, and using oven mitts or hot pads turn the bread around. Most ovens have uneven heat so we move the bread to try to get an even color on the crust. If the the bread looks burned or too dark, turn the heat of the oven down by 50 degrees and cover the loaf with a sheet of aluminum foil. If the bread hasn't started coloring, increase the heat by 50F.
Once you've moved and checked out the loaf, close the oven door, and set the timer for another 15 minutes. When the timer goes off again, use some oven mitts to pull the bread out of the oven. Pop the bread out of the pan onto a cooling rack. Shove a quick reading thermometer into the bottom of the bread. At sea level, you are shooting for an internal temperature of about 205F. If you tap the bottom, it should sound hollow. If it isn't done, put it back in the oven.
At altitudes above 5,280 feet, shoot for 195F. If you can't get the loaf out of the pan, use a table knife to loosen the bread so you can dump the loaf out and use m ore Baker's Joy next time.
Once the bread is done, put the loaf on a cooling rack, turn off the oven if you're done baking, let the bread cool at least an hour, and then cut it. The bread should have a lovely flavor, and have lots of fairly large holes in the loaf.
If you want the bread to have a crispier crust, you can put the loaf - out of the bread pan - back into the turned off oven for another 20 minutes.
Some troubleshooting comments....
Since this bread wasn't kneaded it won't be as well developed a loaf with a nice smooth crust and crumb as you might like. It is a bit rustic. Also, it tends to spread out when it rises above the bread pan. That thinner area will tend to be darker than the rest of the loaf. Don't worry, even if it burns a bit, as long as the rest of the loaf is fine.
If the loaf is too dark, bake it at a slightly lower temperature next time. If the loaf is too light, bake it at a slightly higher temperature next time. If the inside of the loaf is too dry, bake for a shorter period next time. If the inside of the loaf is too wet, bake for a little longer next time. You may have to play with baking times and temperatures a bit to accommodate your altitude and your oven.
If you find specks of flour in the loaf, that suggests you didn't stir the dough quite enough. Stir a bit longer next time, looking for clumps of flour as you do so.
If your bread didn't rise, the most common problems are using outdated yeast, using water that was too hot (which killed the yeast), using too much salt, using too much flour, and/or using too little water. If you still have problems, please drop me a note through our "Contact Us" page.
Hi Mike, I think there might be a typo in this recipe. Although the amount of salt when expressed in tablespoons is correct, the conversion to grams seems to be a bit on the high side, as does the bakers percentage. Although my experience as a baker is not extensive, I would have expected the percentage to be around 2%, rather than over 6%
Hi Pat,
You’re right and that problem escaped many, many proof readers. The original recipe called for 1 TBSP, which would have been about 18 grams (assuming finely ground table salt). The 31 grams was a major mistake.
Still, the 18 grams would have been closer to 3.7% salt, which is still too high.
I redid the numbers. 1 2/3 tsp and 10 grams, which is just a tiny smidge above 2% salt. I hope I hadn’t led too many people astray.
Thanks for your keen eye!
Mike
Hello, there—
I made this loaf tonight following James Beard’s instructions to the letter and ended up wishing I had followed your more detailed instructions instead. I am a novice baker. I could have benefitted from the tips about salt, baking time, checking etc.
My question, though, is about my flat loaf. I used the full, 3 3/4 tsp of active dry yeast. The dough rose very fast. After only 20 minutes of total rise time, it had already risen by more than a third (the go signal according to Beard) and had well crested the top of the pan, so I popped it in the preheated oven as directed. The loaf was completely flat when I checked it 30 min later.
Why did it rise quickly and then fall flat in the oven? Surely the dough didn’t rise too much in the 20 minutes before I put it in the oven? FWIW, the room was about 74°. I proofed the yeast as instructed and it was active. The final product had a nice enough crumb but the loaf was flat. I used plain, whole wheat flour rather than stone ground flour.
Any suggestions for the next attempt?
Tanya
Hi Tanya,
Thanks for your kind comments. I’m sorry about the troubles you encountered.
If I tell you how to make gunpowder, I can give you a formula that absolutely WILL work and has worked for hundreds of years. A large part of that is we have absolutely pure charcoal, sulfur and saltpeter. Sadly the biggest ingredient in bread, flour, is not consistent. Nor, for that matter, is water. The differences between flours and waters introduce uncertainties so the recipe that works great for you may not work all that well for others. So, what do we do? We cope!
Part of the learning experience is learning what the dough should feel like. Sadly, that varies from type of bread to type of bread. A bagel dough is totally different from a sandwich bread. This is a batter bread, so there won’t be much “dough feel” to learn here.
When a dough rises too fast, it tends to over-rise and collapse. There are a number of possible factors at play. The first is the riser, or yeast. You might try cutting your yeast by 1/3 or so. If you used instant (or fast rising) yeast instead of active dry yeast, your should have already cut the yeast quantity in half.
A wetter dough will tend to rise faster than a drier one. Adding a bit more flour to the dough can help, or using less water to make the dough next time.
Hope this helps,
-Mike