No Knead Whole Grain Bread

A "friend" sent me a recipe for whole-grain bread.  I put friend in quotes because a real friend wouldn't have sent me a recipe they knew I would have to try immediately. 

Just look at this LINK and tell me you wouldn't run out and buy these ingredients right away!  Well, there isn't a King Arthur Flour store in my neighborhood so I had to order online and wait patiently for the ingredients to arrive.  I don't stock high protein flour, wheat gluten or malted wheat flakes in my pantry.  Well, at least I didn't used to!  I didn't even know what malted wheat flakes were.

What are all these new ingredients to my pantry?  Well there are two new flours, Sir Lancelot and a 9-Grain Flour blend.  According to King Arthur Flour, what makes whole-grain breads rise, and gives them delightfully chewy texture is this, their highest protein flour.  It has 14.2% protein compared to an all-purpose flour, at 11.7%. 


What the heck is vital wheat gluten you ask?  I've seen it in a lot of recipes and almost always listed as optional so I've never opted to use it.  Vital wheat gluten is like a very fine flour that is all gluten and very little starch.  Technically it's not flour.  It is made from wheat flour that has been hydrated to activate the gluten and then processed to remove everything but that gluten. It's then dried and ground back into a powder.  Because it's almost pure gluten, a little goes a long way to improving the elasticity and rise of the raw dough and the crumb and chewiness in the final loaves.  I opted in this time!


Next is the Malted Wheat Flakes.  I can honestly say I've never heard of these before.  Again according to King Arthur Flour, they are a classic British ingredient, key in their Granary Bread.   They look a lot like toasted rolled oats.


The final unique ingredient is a 9-grain flour blend from King Arthur Flour.  It is made up of hight-protein wheat flour, plus Sustagrain (R) barley, rye, oats, amaranth, quinoa, millet, sorghum and teff!  This is all milled together to create a very fine consistency flour which is very high in fiber.


Making the bread is pretty darn easy.  Dump the ingredients in a bowl, mix it up and let it sit 8 to 12 hours or overnight.  This batch will be overnight!





By the magic of TV it's now the next day!  This is what the dough looks like after proofing all night.  I put it in the covered bowl about 5pm last night and this picture was taken around 12:30 the next day.


The dough is turned out onto a floured surface then put in the baking vessel.  Now the one King Arthur flour uses (if you didn't check out the link above) is this pretty long, thin covered baker.



I don't have a pretty, covered, long, thin baker.  I do have a 5 quart Lodge covered cast iron pot which makes a beautiful loaf of "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day" so I figured it would work just fine for this bread too.  So I put the dough in and pressed it to the edges just like the directions told me to.


The dough is then left to rise again for an hour.  After an hour it not quite half filled my pot


Finally in the oven it goes!  It is baked covered for the first 30 minutes then uncovered until it's done, another 15 or 20 minutes or until it tests at about 205 degrees in the middle.  I can honestly say this is the first time I checked the temperature of my bread!


Then you wait for it to cool.  Lucky for the bread I was busy today and didn't dive right into the hot loaf!


So how was it?  It's good.  Not fabulous but good.  It has a chewy crust and light interior and a definite malty flavor.  I prefer a crisper crust, like that in the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day or the Everyday Bread.  I haven't calculated the nutritional information on this bread but it's got to be pretty good for you compared to other breads with all the fiber in it!

Will I make it again?  Probably, I did buy all the ingredients!

I might try it in a different pan.  It can be baked right on a baking sheet as well.  I might try that too, see how it affects the crust and crumb!

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