My first try

Well, okay, so that's a lie.  I can't really count the number of loaves of bread I've baked in my life, over a summer of working in food service and a semester baking 20 loaves a week in a food co-op and numerous home baking exploits.  However, I am a haphazard baker by nature, which sometimes presents me with pleasant surprises, but always is frustratingly inconsistent.  So, my new project is to bake a whole bunch on my own, and record my processes and results while messing with different variables.  Hopefully I'll end up with something I like consistently :-)

Previously, I've used the basic recipe from the Tassajara Bread Book.  The book is amazing, and has lots of great recipes as well as a beautiful poem about leftovers.  However, this basic bread recipe leaves something to be desired.  I've found it to be rather dense and wet, with a thin crust.  It also uses sweetener, which is fine, but is difficult when one wants to remain vegan, cane-free and cheap (yes, molasses is a viable option, but it colors and flavors the bread in a pretty intense way).  So, as the title of my blog states, I'll be reverting to using only four ingredients for a while - flour, water, salt and yeast.  I will vary the types of flour I use, the length of fermentation (resting and rising), the temperature ingredients are at, and to a small degree, the proportions of the ingredients.  So, without further ado...

My First Attempt at Long-Fermentation Bread

Well, I should preface this account with the statement that my first mistake here is measuring the ingredients by volume rather than weight.  I know, I know, I know...it's totally inaccurate and variable.  But I can't really afford a scale, so it'll have to do.  What I've been doing is calculating recipes by metric weight, and then converting them to US volume measurements using www.gourmetsleuth.com.  Not perfect, but it works in a pinch.  The recipe I used is as follows: 

500 g whole wheat flour (4 cups)

350 g water (1.5 cups)

10 g salt (1.3 tsp)

5 g yeast (1.25 tsp)

So, my second mistake was probably jumping into this project with 100% whole wheat bread.  What can I say?  I got excited!  I started by soaking half of the flour in an equal weight of water overnight, so it could hydrate.  This definitely helped; already I've noticed that the gluten strands aren't breaking as often as I usually notice with whole wheat dough.  I then mixed this mixture (cold, directly out of the fridge, another mistake) with the remainder of the ingredients, all at room temperature except for the water, which was about 80 degrees F.  I kneaded this for 4 minutes, let rest for 7, kneaded for 4, let rest for 8, and kneaded for another 4.  I really intended for all those times to be longer, but I got tired (my counter is about 7 inches too tall for me, and if you've ever kneaded 100% whole wheat dough, you'll know that it takes quite a bit of effort) and impatient.  It is now rising for 3 hours, next to the wood stove (probably 85 degrees F).  It's been 2.5 hours.  Though the texture has changed quite drastically, it still hasn't risen all that much.  I'll probably turn it after another half hour, and give it another hour after that to rise.  We'll see what happens...