Three tips to help you bake great wholemeal bread

hi I’m Rhiannon from the Epson bakehouse and today I’ll be sharing my toptips for you to make a great wholemealloaf at home if you’ve been enjoyingthese bread making tips and you want tostart baking great bread from home thenyou can download my top bread makingtips I’ll let you know more about how todo that at the end of this video youmight already be baking bread at homeand now you want to try a hand at homeyour loaf or perhaps you’ve alreadytried and it just turned out a bitdenser and flatter than you wereexpecting well today I’ll be talkingabout some top tips to prevent that andhelp you bake a great wholemeal loaffirst of all I wanted to talk a littlebit more about what I mean by wholemealflour got some in here and I hope youcan see it’s got a beautiful creamycolor and it’s quite coarse and got lotsof bran in it and that’s because to formwholemeal flour the grain of whichevergrain you’re using so it could be wheatrye barley is crushed entirely togetheror when it’s being milled the bran onthe outside is stripped off and thenadded back in to create wholemeal flourso it’s all parts of the grain ofwhatever cereal grain you’re using thebasic setup of a grain is that insideyou’ve got these starchy protein filledinterior the called the endosperm andthen you’ve got the brown outside andwhen flour is milled the inside thestarchy interior of the grain formswhite flour and the brown on the outsideis only in your flour if you’re buyingwholemeal flour or some brown flour inless percentage so the first top tipwhen you’re using a wholemeal flour isthat you’ll need to adjust the watercontent of your recipe because thatbrand that added bran will absorb a lotmore water than just white flour wouldand for example on this this dough thatI have here I’ve used 500 grams ofwholemeal flour and I’ve actually addedin 400 grams of water so that’s about80% as a ratio whereas if I was usingwhite flour I’d only put in about 320grams of water or about 64% so you cansee it’s quite a big increase in waterand that will be all sucked up by thebran soreally will absorb a lot more water sobear that in mind you won’t be able tojust switch your white recipe and switchthe flour to wholemeal and not make thatadjustment of water because your loafwill turn out very dry and dense mysecond tip is to use a pre-soak methodnothing to do with laundry this is aboutadding the flour and water together ofyour recipe and leaving it to soak itcould be for just an hour or you couldleave it overnight the reason for doingthat is twofold firstly as mentioned thebrown will absorb a lot of water andactually when Brown is present in yourflour it starts to cut through thedeveloping gluten network in your doughthat gluten is a stretchy protein thatforms in your dough and forms thescaffold of your bread and if the branis cutting through it you can see whyyour dough might end up a bit flatter soif you do a pre soak method and allowthe brand lots of time to absorb waterit will cut through your gluten networkless in addition the pre state methodwill also help the formation of yourgluten network without there being anymixing or interference from the bran sothe gluten only forms when water isadded into flour and so by doing thismethod and leaving your flour and waterto soak together before adding anythingelse in from your recipe you give achance for that gluten networks formonce you’ve pre soaked the flour andwater for however long you do it thenyou would add in the salt and the yeastmix together and knead your dough andthen leave it to rise in the normal wayyou might need to give it a little bitlonger to rise as well to help yourdough develop my third tip would also beto add a little bit of honey or brownsugar into your recipe say just fifteento thirty grams in 500 grams of flourit’ll sweeten up your dough a little bityes and you don’t absolutely don’t haveto do this if you’d rather not add sugarto your bread but it helps balance outthe flavor of the whole meal and alsofeeds the yeast and gives them a littleboost as they’re producing gas in yourdough so those are my top three tips forbaking a great wholemeal loaf at homeplenty more water use a pre soak methodand add in a little honey or brown sugarto sweeten your doughif you found these bread-making tipshelpful then as mentioned you candownload my email series of bread makingtop row making tips you can do that bygoing to the link in the comments onthis video or by going directly to mywebsite WWE and beat cows code on UK I’dlove to know if you’re baking your ownhome your loaf at home and whether youfound these tips helpful please do sharewhat you baked I love to see what you’rebaking at home otherwise I’ll say byefor now and happy baking