Making bread

maisie_cat

I make wholemeal as a 50:50 with white flour mix and found that adding a tsp of wheat gluten to strengthen the flour works a treat.
I grind the wholemeal myself, so it varies and I've also found the strength of white bread flour, bought from Tesco or M&S also varies.
I make bread 3x a week and do sometimes get a lovely dome that then collapses, the upside being that the slices are squarer for sandwiches

DullGreyGuy

Filklore said:

I learned that wholewheat has less gluten than white but also that the bran in wholewheat can cut the gluten as it forms.

It varies very much by the type of grain you are using and certainly more than it does between white -v- wholemeal. If you look at Doves Farms their White Rye does have more protein than their Wholemeal but for Spelt it's the other way around. 

You can look for a higher protein grain like Emmer, Khorasan or Canadian Wheat if your trying to make your own flour using a soft wheat 

bouicca21

Thank you all. I’m off on my hols so won’t be able to take advantage of all these useful tips till I get back.  I conclude that I need to slow down the first prove and should be adding vitamin c/improver to the mix.  The comments on the gluten content of wholemeal flour also make me wonder about the mix of flours.  When I started I was using 300g wholemeal to 100g strong white.  Lately I’ve upped the wholemeal to about 350g with 50g strong white.  Maybe that’s part of the problem.

DullGreyGuy

bouicca21 said:

Thank you all. I’m off on my hols so won’t be able to take advantage of all these useful tips till I get back.  I conclude that I need to slow down the first prove and should be adding vitamin c/improver to the mix.  The comments on the gluten content of wholemeal flour also make me wonder about the mix of flours.  When I started I was using 300g wholemeal to 100g strong white.  Lately I’ve upped the wholemeal to about 350g with 50g strong white.  Maybe that’s part of the problem.

Wholemeal plain or strong/bread flour?

What is the stated protein per 100g?

bouicca21

Wholemeal strong bread flour, 12.7g protein; strong white 13.4.

HotDog2020

You could always use a recipe there is nothing forbidden in doing this, I always use the back of the hovis yeast packet however I mix half wholemeal and half white, never fails. Also MD and SD told me about keeping alive your own yeast for bread making, something to think about if you get serious...also I beleive it makes sour dough...also I heard of a lady who had a yeast culture from when she was 7 she is now in her 50s or something like that and uses the same culture now.

silverwhistle

I have a sour dough culture which I sometimes resurrect and reactivate, otherwise I use Fermipan which I buy in 500g packets and works well. Luckily for slow proving I have a back door step or a cool spare room as like many others finding space in the fridge is a rare event! I think over fast proving is probably your issue.

If you want to raise the gluten content of a mix I find that Waitrose strong Canadian flour at (ISTR) 14.5% really helps and I use it in various proportions with other flours. It's a bit more expensive and I rarely use it purely on its own.