Something else for a change: Soaking flour in the bread machine, Experiment #1.

Believe it or not, I'm getting tired of writing about diet and exercise all the time.  I know I've lost a lot of readers since last year (though I've gained more); I never intended for this to become a weight loss blog, and I hope to go back to my previous mix of homemaking, mothering, politics, nerdy stuff, and theology at some point.  But I kind of want to finish out the series and make a nice handy index of all those diet and exercise posts.  

So anyway, I suppose recipes are sort of about diet and exercise, but here's what I'm starting this morning.

I bake our family's sandwich bread in a bread machine.  It's really a perfect device for me and I wish I hadn't waited so long to buy one.   In July I paid $50 for a used West Bend Baker's Choice Plus II from Craigslist.  I have not bought a single loaf of bread from the store since then.  (Bagels and English muffins and hot dog buns, yes; bread, no.)   

The West Bend produces nearly-normal-loaf shapes (there's always two divots in the bottom of the loaf for the kneader bars), is ridiculously easy to operate, and has a time-delay feature.  I can make whole wheat bread in less than 10 minutes of work, plus a little less than 4 hours rise and bake time.  I can also make dough for shaped breads, which I don't do as often because they require a little bit more thought.   I have made bagels for Sunday breakfast and hoagie buns for a weekday dinner of meatball sandwiches.  Day in and day out, though, it's loaves of whole wheat bread for the kids' peanut butter sandwiches or for a slice of toast under my poached egg.    An optimized recipe hangs in a frame on the refrigerator, so that anyone in my house who can read can make a loaf of honey oatmeal bread.  

Now that the habit of making our own bread is really well established, I am ready to move on to the next stage:  Figuring out how to add a pre-soaking step while still harnessing the advantages of the bread machine (time delay, one-pan convenience, mix-rise-knead-rise-bake completely unattended).

Pre-soaking whole grains and flours in an acid solution is something I learned about a few years ago.  My friend Cathie wrote about why to soak whole grains here and included some links; it's a good place to start.  The short answer is that whole grains (but not refined ones) contain phytic acids and enzyme inhibitors that slow the absorption of nutrients, and presoaking in acid deactivates those compounds.  This isn't conspiracy-theory natural-foodie beardy-weirdy stuff; follow Cathie's links and you'll see that this is a mechanism that nutritionists know well, even though it has not filtered down much into general knowledge.  Cathie also notes that her family, with various allergies and metabolic problems, tolerates whole grains better if they're soaked; and I note that whole wheat pancakes and waffles have a much tenderer texture if they're soaked.  That's good news for people trying to wean their family off Bisquick. 

(Here's Cathie's favorite soaked 100% whole wheat bread, not a bread machine recipe.  It's the first recipe in the post.)

I have always made waffles and pancakes with soaked flour, because I always mix the batter the night before anyway, and so it never added an extra step to soak them.   But I have not yet been sure how best to combine soaking with the bread machine, at least the one that I have.  There are two problems with this.

The first problem is the yeast.  (I'll get to the other problem in a moment.)  Some bread machines have a yeast compartment that keeps the yeast separate from the other ingredients during the time delay, until the bread is ready to be mixed.  Mine does not have this feature.  Instead, to use the time delay with normal bread baking, the ingredients are carefully layered in the bread pan:  first all the liquid, then the dry ingredients on top of the liquid, and finally the yeast on top, in a little well made in the dry ingredients.  This keeps the yeast dry throughout the time delay until the machine comes on and the mix cycle begins.  But it also keeps the flours dry, except for the boundary layer in contact with the wet ingredients at the bottom.  

What I'd like to be able to do is 

1.  mix the flours and acid liquid together in the bread machine pan
2.  add the other ingredients --- including the yeast and salt ---  in the pan in some way that the yeast will not raise the dough during the soaking time and the salt will not mix into the dough and inhibit the deactivation of the enzymes
3.  set the timer to produce bread 13 hours later (the maximum), which gives me a bit more than 9 hours of soaking time

 
 I have a few ideas for how to do this, and am going to investigate them over the next few loaves of bread.

Idea #1.  Protect the yeast from moisture in a pile of dry white flour:  Decrease whole wheat flour by 2 tablespoons.  Mix the flours, oil, liquid, and sugar in the bread machine.  Then put 2 tablespoons of all-purpose flour in a pile on top of the wet mixture.  Make a little well in the pile and add the yeast and salt.    Question:  How long (up to 24 h) will the yeast stay dry?  

Idea #2.  Protect the yeast from moisture in a capsule of solid fat:  Mix the flours, liquid, and sugar in the bread machine.  Then make a little "cup" of 2 Tbsp solid coconut oil and add the yeast and salt to the cup.  Dig a little well in the wet mixture and place the capsule in the well.  Question:  How long will the yeast stay dry?  Question:  Will it still mix, moisten, and rise properly if it's been embedded in a fat phase?  (Note:  Coconut oil melts at 76 degrees F.)

Idea #3.  Protect the yeast from moisture in a pool of liquid fat:   Mix the flours, liquid, and sugar in the bread machine.    Dig a little well in the wet mixture and add 2 Tbsp vegetable oil.  Add the yeast and salt to the oil phase.   Question:  How long will the yeast stay dry?  Question:  Will it still mix, moisten, and rise properly if it's been embedded in a fat phase? 

Idea #4.  Don't bother protecting the yeast, just use less of it:  Mix the yeast right into the flours, add the salt to a corner of the pan after mixing the flours (so it won't interfere with the deactivation), and use less yeast so that the bread will rise only very slowly during soaking.   Question:  What is the empirical function y(T) where y is the optimum quantity of yeast and T is the duration of soaking?   Question:  What adjustments must be made for ambient temperature over the range 68-90 degrees F?

Idea #5.  Pre-presoak:  Mix the flours and liquid in a bowl at least 7 hours ahead of time.  At a convenient bread-making time, add the soaked flour/liquid mixture and the other ingredients to the bread machine pan.   Set the time delay as usual, perhaps protecting the yeast as in Ideas 1-3.  Question:   Is this more convenient than mixing the flours and liquid in the bread pan?

Idea #6.  Forget yeast and learn to make sourdough bread in the machine.

For my basic recipe, I'm using this "buttermilk" recipe, since it's designed for an acidulated liquid anyway:

Whole Wheat - Buttermilk Bread (really soured-milk)

3 cups whole wheat flour
1 and  1/2 Tbsp wheat gluten
1 tsp kosher salt
1 and 1/2 Tbsp sugar
2 Tbsp coconut oil
1 and 1/2 cups whole milk, soured with 1 and 1/2 Tbsp white vinegar

1 and 1/2 tsp bread machine yeast

I mixed everything except the yeast and 2 Tbsp of flour on the "dough" setting of my bread machine, then unplugged the machine and pulled the bread pan out onto my counter, where I can keep an eye on it all day.  (Yes, I remembered too late that the salt is not supposed to be soaked with the flour.  I don't think it will affect my experiment about yeast-wetting.)

I added 2 Tbsp of all-purpose flour, and added the yeast (1/2 Tbsp) on top.

Now I'm watching and waiting.  I put the yeast in at 8:45 a.m. and took the picture at 10:40 or so.  The yeast is still completely dry:  no moisture has wicked up through the all-purpose flour, as well as I can tell.

Here's where I can show you the second problem with letting the flour soak in the bread machine:  the dough dries out.   When the ingredients are layered in the pan, the dry ingredients on top keep the water from evaporating; when the bread is soaking like this, though, the water has a continuous transport path, right up and out.   If I let the bread soak in the bread machine with the timer ready to turn it on, quite obviously I can't cover the bread with plastic wrap to prevent it from drying out (that's why I'm letting it sit uncovered on my counter).  Already the surface of my dough is dry to the touch.   

This leads to more ideas to be tested:

Idea #7:  Protect the dough from getting dry and the yeast from getting wet by covering the whole wet layer of dough with a layer of dry white flour, and putting the yeast on top.  Question:  How thick a layer of dry white flour is necessary?  (I want to use as little as possible, because I want the bread to be mostly whole wheat.)

Idea #8:  Protect the dough from getting dry with an oil layer.  In this scenario I would brush liquid oil on top of the mixed ingredients, and then put the yeast on top of that, protected by a couple tablespoons of dry white flour.

Idea #9:  Compensate for the dough drying out by adding more liquid to begin with.  Question:  How much to add?

Stay tuned for the results.

Comments

[Christy P.]

Very interesting - for our usual no-knead rustic bread, I use 3 cups of flour, 1.5 cups of filtered water, 1/4 t yeast, and 1.5 t of salt all mixed together at the same time and left on the counter with the mixing bowl covered with a plate. It sits 12-18 hours before baking and rises appropriately during that time, but slowly b/c of the no sugar and the little amount of yeast. Have done this in ambient house temps between 60 and 85 or so. There is no acid, but I think that I will try to slightly acidify the water and see what happens.

The downside is that the resulting loaves are nowhere near sandwich-shaped. Next experiment = baking in a loaf pan rather than a Dutch oven.

The point of this - if you have a long rise time you can use very little yeast. I guess I need to read through the acid soak links, but I would try mixing everything together with just a smidge of yeast and letting it soak/rise at the same time.

[bearing]

I will definitely be trying the low-yeast long-rise option. It is going to require some experimentation because I'm not sure how the acid will affect the yeast.

Had you never encountered the acid-soaking stuff before? I'm surprised, it sounds right up your alley! Take a look and let me know what you think of it. Sourdough fermentations are supposed to take care of the problem on their own. The strength of acidity that tends to be recommended in recipes is 1 Tbsp vinegar (cider or white) to 1 cup of other liquid; I don't know if this is really how strong it needs to be to take care of the phytate, or if that just happens to be the strength that recipe writers settled on for reasons of convenience.

[4ddintx]

I know from my GF baking that adding vinegar to a bread recipe will reduce the amount it rises. Many GF recipes call for the addition of vinegar in the recipe and I've stopped doing it (unless I'm presoaking to reduce phytates, which isn't as much of a problem with GF grains) and my bread rises better.

Tabitha

[Cathie B]

Christy makes a good point that by letting it sit longer, reduces the need for so much acid. The Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day uses 1 1/2 Tbsp of yeast for 4 1-lb loaves. So, that would be approximately a little over 1 tsp of yeast per 1 lb loaf. It's also refrigerated which would retard the yeast growth. Part of the reason for keeping the yeast out is that vinegar does also retard yeast activity, so maybe 1 tsp is a good place to start.

I'm excited to see where you go with this. I am starting to soak my waffle and pancake batter now, (thanks).

I just got another 50lbs of wheat berries, so if you need more flour, let me know.

[Cathie B]

Sorry - in the first sentence, I meant to say reduces the need for so much yeast. Pregnancy brain strikes again...

[bearing]

Tabitha, are those yeasted GF breads, or chemically leavened ("quick") breads?

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