u/kittymmeow

About a month ago I became obsessed with the idea of baking my own bread, specifically a whole grain pullman loaf. This is my first time making bread of any sort myself so anything edible is a win at this point.

Recipe was based vaguely on the process from King Arthur's High Hydration Whole Wheat Sourdough recipe, deconstructed and then reconstructed to fit my small pan (5.3x5.3x5.2in) and schedule with some tweaks based on other tips I've seen for whole wheat and pullman loaves. Probably not advised to adlib so many things on my first loaf but oh well!

Process:

* Make whole wheat levain with a 1:5:4 ratio. I used 5g of ripe starter, 25g of KA whole wheat, and 20g of water. Starter is 12 days old, doubling in <8hr for the past few days.
* 7hrs later when levain has doubled, mix 100% flour, 80% water, 2% salt. I used 350g KA whole wheat, 55g Bob's Red Mill dark rye (total 405g flour), 324g water, 8g salt.
* Split off 15% of this mass and add 12g (3%) of the levain to create a preferment. Let sit at room temperature overnight.
* The remainder of the mass (~639g) goes into the fridge with no levain for an overnight cold autolyse/saltolyse.
* 7hrs later in the morning, give the autolyse mixture a few folds and then let rest to bring closer to room temp.
* About 30min later, combine preferment and autolyse and place the dough into a clear container and cover
* From here, follow steps 11-16 in the KA recipe for folding and resting.
* After the final fold and rest (total bulk ferment time ~4hr), I was unsure if it had proofed enough so decided to wait some more...?
* 2 hours later (total BF now 6hrs) it had definitely doubled in the container so time to shape.
* On a lightly oiled surface, press into a rectangle, fold into thirds, and roll into a short log. Place into the pan seam side down.
* At this point it only fills the pan about halfway so continue to wait some more for it to maybe rise some more? 2 more hours of waiting (total BF now 8hrs) and very little has changed so give up and put it in the oven.
* Bake at 375 deg until internal temperature reads 205 deg. This took about 50 mins, I checked temperature at 40 mins and it wasn't done so left it in for another 10 which nailed the 205.
* Remove from the oven and immediately remove the loaf from the pan onto a rack.
* Let cool for about an hour before taking a slice. I know I should typically wait longer but I knew the loaf was flawed and was too curious about what the inside looked like so I decided to do it anyway.

Impressions: Quite sour, bit too salty. Not sure if my scale is accurate enough for the small quantity needed for salt, or if it just needs less salt in the recipe anyway. Overall not actually too bad flavor wise! Texture-wise it is obviously very dense, but I expected worse from how little it rose in the pan so at least it's edible...!

I do think I overproofed prior to shaping it and putting it in the pan. The container I was proofing in was probably too large for this quantity of dough so it expanded horizontally first, making it hard to estimate rise. Ambient temperature here is also over 80 deg F so that probably didn't help.

Might add some honey and/or seeds next time to balance out the sourness and texture too.

Of course, it might benefit me to do a less complicated recipe next time but I kinda enjoy the adventure :)

edit: the mobile app completely broke all my formatting, took half an hour to fix it, the bulletpoints still don't work. ok