Had I not been this excited, I probably would have postponed posting about this awesome loaf until tomorrow. but i wanted to share it with you while the excitement is still on. so here it is for you, my 100 % whole wheat bread using TangZhong or water roux method.
A while a back I had baked another loaf using the same TangZhong method. Hokkaido Milk Toast. Remember ? even then I had gone gaga over how soft and awesome the loaf was. but that loaf different. it was with all-purpose flour and had a zillion of other things like butter, milk and heavy cream to make it what it was... heavenly.. i would say but you can choose your own adjective.. this loaf on the other hand uses none of those gorgeous stuff... it is a humble loaf made of whole wheat flour, honey, olive oil, some seeds and nuts.. which despite the presence of whole wheat flour is moist and not very dense. (Thanks to TangZhong !) It is a sweetish bread which can be served with soup for a filling but light dinner or simply slathered with butter or jam for a hearty breakfast.
I adapted the recipe from King Arthur Flour and used tips to convert the loaf into a Tangzhong one from Simply a Food Blog. Basically, the idea of the TangZhong method is to mix 1 part of the total flour for the bread with 5 parts of water (by weight) at 65°C (149 °F) to form a paste/wet dough. At 65°C, the gluten in the flour and water mixture absorb the moisture and become leavened. Thus, when the TangZhong is added into other ingredients of a dough, it heightens and produces a fluffier bread. In order to incorporate the TangZhong method into a bread recipe, one simply has to make the Tangzhong with 5% by weight of the total flour and the 5 parts of liquid (by weight) and reduce the flour and liquid in the original recipe by the quantity used to make the TangZhong. Since I do not have a weighing machine i relied on online conversion tools to go back and forth between cups, grams and tablespoon measures of whole wheat flour and at the end did a bit of rounding of figures. I was a little worried, but thankfully the rounding off did not ruin the bread. I ended up with a nice, soft, fluffy loaf which even my little one did not refuse. there isn't anything that i would change about this recipe except maybe i'll glaze it with milk next time. I just forgot to glaze this time.
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the method (using bread machine)
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This loaf is being yeastspotted.