Since I have been making mainly white-flour breads, I decided it was time to branch out into some of the whole-wheat recipes. I chose Whole-Wheat Bread Made with Hard-Wheat Flour as a good basic recipe to start with.
Here are the ingredients:
The recipe calls for three cups of whole-wheat flour and two cups of hard-wheat, or bread, flour. The whole-wheat flour behaved differently compared to the all-purpose flour that I’ve been using: the dough was much softer and more pliable; I had to use the entire recommended amount of flour (usually I need to reduce it by at least one-half cup); and my rising time was much longer (usually my rising time is half that called for by the recipe). This bread was also different in that it uses molasses as a sweetener.
Beard isn’t overly specific as to how many loaves the recipe makes–he states that you can shape it into one free form loaf, two 8 x 4 loaves, or two 9 x 5 loaves. Based on the volume of dough after the first rising, I used two 8 x 4 loaf pans.
The 8 x 4 loaf pans were definitely the right choice–after the second rising, it was clear that there wasn’t enough dough to fill two 9 x 5 pans. Beard comments that this bread “has a lovely smell when baking and cooling,” and it certainly does–a very pronounced aroma of molasses and whole-wheat.
Despite the wonderful molasses aroma, we couldn’t taste any molasses in the finished bread. However, it was savory and delicious, with a pleasantly soft and chewy texture.
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