Stella Parks on Baking a Light Whole Wheat Loaf

[BakerAunt]

I'm sharing a link to a Stella Parks article, with recipe link, for a light whole wheat loaf:

https://www.seriouseats.com/2019/01/how-to-make-100-percent-whole-wheat-sandwich-bread.html

I shared one a while back for a pumpkin yeast sandwich bread where she also insisted that it had to be done in the food processor. Both Len and I tried that recipe with our stand mixers with good results. I'm wondering if that would also be the case for this recipe, particularly as I do not have a food processor that could handle that amount of dough.

I'm on vacation right now, but I may give it a try when we return home.

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[Mike Nolan]

I've got a 14 cup Cuisinart, I may try this with some freshly ground whole meal flour. I normally do free-form loaves, but I think this one might work better in a loaf pan as it provides some support.

[chocomouse]

I always make my pizza dough in my 14 cup Cuisinart, and I've made bread doughs of 3 - 3.5 cups of flour in it; it should work fine. I worry because my Cuisinart is over 32 years old, and I'm not sure how much longer it will hold up.

[skeptic7]

Is a food processor very useful? I've never owned one. I hate recipes that assume I have appliances and that the recipe is unworkable without one. Ex. KAF thinks that there Easter Pomona bread needs a mixer since its a very soft sticky dough -- my work around for that was to knead with plastic gloves on so the dough doesn't stick to my fingers and keep on kneading until the dough stops being a sticky mess about half an hour.

[BakerAunt]

Skeptic--my large food processor (probably a 10 or 12 cup?) is a 30-year old Cuisinart. I like it for pureeing baked pumpkin. I also like it for grating zucchini or carrots for baking, which it accomplishes with no wrist fatigue and so much more quickly than I could grate it by hand. However, for a small amount, I would grate by hand, as the food processor is more work to clean. I like it for chopping cranberries for relish or baking. It's great for making a graham cracker crust. I have used it to chop almonds for cookies. The large processor does not do well with small amounts, so I have a small processor (about 2-cups) that I use for grinding oats when I need oat flour. It comes in handy for grinding oat bran, which makes the oat bran finer, so that the finished product is not dry. I even have a little 1-cup Cuisinart that I use for grinding powdered milk that is in granular form--or caked espresso powder. If my Cuisinart were ever to break, I would replace it. Once the house is remodeled, I'm going to try the pasta attachment my mother also gave me years ago, and which I've not used.

That said, I could get along without it, but I would prefer not to do so.

You have an excellent point about recipes that seem to require a specific piece of equipment. As this is the second Stella Parks recipe that "requires" a food processor, I'm wondering if her next cookbook will revolve around it. Len and I were able to bake her Maple Pumpkin bread using our mixers, and the breads came out great. I do have a fuzzy recollection that Peter Reinhart's latest wholegrain bread baking book uses this soaking technique, but I think he does the rest of it by hand. I'll check the book when I get home.

King Arthur Flour can be particularly irritating about not giving alternatives for baking dishes for some of their recipes, which then becomes an issue when they stop selling those dishes or pans. Usually, I can figure out a workaround that yields just as good of a result.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 11 months ago by BakerAunt.

[Mike Nolan]

When we first got a food processor, around 40 years ago, we used it a lot.

I don't use mine very often these days, nor do I use a stand blender. (I don't think there's even one in the kitchen.) I use my stick blender frequently, though.

[chocomouse]

I couldn't live without my food processor! I don't have a big mixer, just a 40 year old small hand mixer, nor do I have a blender. I use a bread machine to mix and knead bread dough. I use food processor for a lot of the vegetables from my garden, most notably shredding zucchini and carrots, and slicing cucumbers for pickles. I'm still learning to use it for small jobs such as cutting in the butter for pies, scones, streusel, etc. It's a tremendous help as the arthritis gets worse. I do also have a 1 cup Cuisinart, but don't use it very often; it doesn't seem worth the effort to clean it.

[Mike Nolan]

I tried this today, I'm not sure if I over-proofed it (I still had an hour left in final proof when I put it in the oven) or if it just was too moist, but it collapsed a bit during baking, so it has kind of a flat top. I'm waiting for it to fully cool before I cut it, but it smells good. I"m curious to see how open the crumb is.

I used freshly ground whole meal flour, which I think is a bit moister than bagged flour, so I should probably have cut the 2nd water back a bit, the dough was really sticky, though it was very elastic, as the recipe said it should be. It was kind of hard to shape because it was so moist and sticky. It rose pretty much as the recipe said it would, too.

I made it in my 14 cup food processor, and the dough was sticky enough that I don't think it would have worked in a mixer, even if I cut back on the water a little.

[Mike Nolan]

Considering the way it collapsed, the crumb is decent. It might have needed another minute or two in the oven. The taste is pretty good, not bitter like whole grain breads often are. I'll probably try it again, depending on what my wife thinks of it. I used about half of the salt the recipe called for but it tastes adequately salty.

[Mike Nolan]

It toasts well and has good structure, it'd make a good sandwich bread.

[BakerAunt]

Thanks for the report, Mike. Your experience suggests that this recipe does indeed require a large food processor. (Sigh, says the woman whose food processor is unlikely to handle it.) I'll be interested to hear, if you bake it again, if you can prevent the collapse by tweaking the process.

[Mike Nolan]

The recipe suggests that people with smaller food processors can divide it in two and then combine them.

[BakerAunt]

True, but that takes twice as long. I still wonder if my 7-quart Cuisinart stand mixer could manage it.

[Mike Nolan]

The lengthy parts of this recipe are the initial soak and the rises, the total time using the food processor was less than about 4 minutes, so doubling that doesn't seem too bad to me. I think a 7 cup food processor would handle it in two parts.

[Mike Nolan]

My wife says this bread goes great with eggs, so I think it's a keeper for us. I made some cheese toast with it to go with supper last night, it was a change from making it with Vienna bread but it was pretty good.

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