I made these wholemeal buns yesterday, made 12 with the intent of using them this week for oldest kid’s pack lunch for school but today I have three left. Father-in-law and Bikerboy had a couple still warm out of the oven, one with just butter melting and the other with bacon, father-in-law took some home.
This is the second time I’ve used John Letts’ Heritage stoneground wholemeal flour, the first time was last week in an experiment against another stoneground wholemeal flour. Wholemeal dough has a very quick turnaround especially when using it in a yeast recipe, if using it in a 100% sourdough the acidity of the Lactic Acid Bacteria will slow down the fermentation a little because it halts some of the enzyme activity in the flour. If you remember back in my Rye Flour post where I point out the same thing using sourdough with rye flour.
Best to think of wholemeal flour as a very rich diet for the enzymes, everything will happen much faster, they’ll turn the abundance of natural sugar in wholemeal flour into food for the yeast very quickly resulting in an over-proved loaf before you know it. I always think of it as Dough On Steroids.
The added problem with stoneground wholemeal flour is that the process itself of crushing the kernels between the stones resulting in the way that the bran is fragmented and the way the germ is spread throughout the flour more evenly it will accelerate the process even more than wholemeal flour pressed between the rollers in modern milling.
Yesterday these took no time and I was struggling to free up the oven with other baking to get them in before they were over-proved, I just managed it.
Knowing my baking schedule was going to be a busy one I kept the dough a touch drier than my normal, the wetter the dough the more it accelerates the process.
For lunch today I was lucky enough to have one of those perfect combinations hanging in my fridge and cupboard, hot smoked mackerel marinated in ginger, honey and soy sauce and this made me think of pickled ginger to go with it and my friend Gloria’s perfect present of rhubarb ketchup, a dark sauce mildly spicy with that particular lingering tang recognisable from the rhubarb.
When I met up with Gloria again at Monica’s home last month I came away with her rhubarb ketchup, some candied peel perfectly moorish sharp tangy sweet and different colour eggs from her hens. The eggs were deliciously fresh with a rich creamy yolks, makes me a little tearful she lives so far away, they were perfect eggs. I have at least the ketchup to keep me going and that candied peel will be turned into hot cross buns soon enough.
Gloria’s recipe for Rhubarb Ketchup here.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
That looks like the absolute perfect sandwich to me!
These buns look absolutely wonderful – can see why they disappeared so quickly!
I love visiting your site! Especially when I see all the bread you bake I can almost smell it and it takes me back to my grandma’s era where they used mill and grind inbetween stones to make a lovely batch of fresh baked loaves! Wish I could accomplish such luxuries but I have to be content with the next best thing: your blog!! I’ll be trying that Rhubarb Ketchup recipe though!!!
And if I could go back Lina I would ask my gran for her Broa recipe!
This post inspired me. Bought a fillet of mackerel and am grilling it tonight to go with some of Gloria’s terrific rhubarb ketchup. Can’t wait..
I have recently discovered your blog and think it is fantastic. Have you posted the recipe for these wholemeal rolls? I want to make some and was going to follow my wholemeal loaf recipe and just shape into rolls, but yours look, and sound, so great, and you are so much more experienced than I am. I hope you don’t mind me asking. Thank you.
hi Amy – yes do convert your loaf into rolls. These here were made using heritage flour which is why they taste particularly great, and this great flavour can also be achieved through good stoneground wholemeal flour.
At some point I will post a recipe for wholemeal loaf/rolls, but there’s nothing to it.
500g wholemeal flour
350g water, lukewarm but you may need more depending on flour, if too dry add an extra 20grms at a time
8-10g fine salt
4-5g dry instant yeast
Dan Lepard in his Short and Sweet book adds half a vitamin C tablet to his wholemeal in order to strengthen the gluten which is what bakers/millers do to strengthen flour. If you haven’t any vitC, you can try my tip of sieving the course bran out once you weigh the flour before adding any ingredients.
Keep the bran to one side for now.
Add all the ingredients (apart from bran), the mixture should not be dry if you see my pics of doughs all over this site you’ll see what I mean.
Keep dough at room temperature for 20-25mins add the bran back in and mix through.
Rest 10mins.
Divide dough up weigh into 100g – 120g rolls and place on baking paper like I have here.
Turn the oven on to 200C fan/ 220C
While the oven is heating up let them rise for about 30mins.
Bake for 20-25mins with a little steam would be good but not essential, have a look at my Walnut & Raisin Sourdough post for details on steaming.
The aim with wholemeal bread is to under-prove, everything happens faster with wholemeal flour, it’s like the yeast is having a Christmas dinner when normally on white flour its on a diet, so it overindulges, and the process speeds up really fast. If you prove the wholemeal to its limit before going into the oven it will run out of energy to rise properly during baking, because it will have done its work beforehand, hence many brick loaves.
The reason to sieve the coarse bran initially and you don’t have to but helps a little is to give the gluten proteins a chance to bond. The bran is like little shards and will cut into the strands of gluten forming, allowing the the gluten to form beforehand I find it helps with a better result in the crumb.
Hope this helps.