Whole Grain Loaves without Vital Wheat Gluten, and Highlights from the Mill City Bread Festival

whole grain homemade bread

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When I wrote Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day in 2009, I made a strategic choice. I knew that most of our readers liked their bread light and fluffy, and our refrigerator storage technique could be unforgiving when you used a lot of whole grains. For some of my tasters, whole grain bread made from wet dough stored in the fridge could be a little too dense for their taste. So I lightened things up a bit, by boosting the gluten in our whole grain doughs that appear in that book, using vital wheat gluten (VWG). Well, I’ve been experimenting on whole-grain doughs stored without VWG, and I’ve been pleased with the results. Here’s a simple alternative recipe for whole grain loaves without the added gluten. Plus, highlights from my appearance at the Mill City Bread Festival. Read More

New Video: Grilled pizza!

I promised a video to go with last month’s recipe for this fantastic mushroom and potato pizza from Provence (Rustic Wild Mushroom and Potato Pizza), a recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.  I did it outside, on the grill with a stone, so here it is.  A few things:

  1. Grill temp: Though some of the stones say to crank the gas grill as high as it can go, we’ve found that pizza done this way scorches on the bottom before the toppings are hot.  I used about 500 degrees F by by grill’s thermometer (250 C).  Today I used the Emile Henry Flame Top Pizza Stone, which worked beautifully (give it a 20 to 30 minute pre-heat)
  2. Baking without a stone: That works too; follow the directions here if you want to go for a crisper, smokier effect.  We’ll have much more on that in our upcoming pizza book (pre-order on Amazon).

Watching Dough Rise – how high should it go? (Plus, a new member of the Bread in Five family)

We have you mix up your dough in a nice big 6-Quart Food-Storage Container, because over the course of 2 hours it will grow to nearly touch the lid.  Some folks have asked exactly what that should look like, so I mixed up a batch of each Master recipe from ABin5 and HBin5, then sat back and watched them rise. I promise this is more fun than watching paint dry, it will show you exactly what your dough should look like and I’ve set it to a little Johnny Cash (Ooops, apparently I can’t do that. Had to switch to something with a little less….copyright).

We also have an exciting announcement to make, especially for those Brits who are baking our bread or people excited to bake with weights.

Our first book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day was translated for British bakers. Yes, it is still in English, but the recipes are converted to weights. They appear in both ounces and metrics. For those of you Americans excited to bake by weights this will be a welcome edition. The book’s title and look are also changed, but the recipes are the same. Five Minute Bread is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com.UK and will be on bookstore shelves in January 2011.

Happy Baking!