Saturday, February 6, 2010

Operation: Bread Experimentation

I shared in a previous post about my breadmaking saga, how I used to fail miserably at it and finally got the hang of it. However, once I switched to whole wheat, I am back to square one, nearly. With a need to figure out the right way to make whole wheat bread that is fluffy, tasty, and doesn't get stale quickly without using speciality, expensive ingredients nor using unhealthy additives.
I mentioned my trick of rolling out the dough with a rolling pin, then rolling it up to help it be more fluffy. Unfortunately, it was only phenomenal fresh from the oven, but once it cooled down it was only mediocre.
From now on, I will be doing a review of the different techniques I try to let you all know what works and what doesn't. I will be using the same format to make it easier to compare.

Method name: Gluten based bread
Why do it? I know many bread recipes call for high gluten flour. You should already know that I don't buy unnecessary specialty items like that if I can do well enough without. This is my method of trying to replicate the result without extravagant cost.
Method: Use seitan from this recipe as the basis for the dough, with added whole wheat flour and the other things normally added to bread.

Immediate Result: Came out really awesome! Tasted delicious, looked great, was airy and spongy and all around amazing!
Result a Few Hours Later: Still really great. Not ultra ultra awesome, but still very good. Doesn't get stale quickly.
Work Required: 10 minutes of extra active preparation time, overnight preparation necessary.
Extra Cost, Specialty Ingredients: None
Worth repeating? Definitely!
Worth the time? Absolutely!

Have you ever tried putting seitan in your bread recipes?

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