Overnight 40% Whole Wheat Bread

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You can use this recipe to start the day before around 1pm, shape into loaves at 6pm and proof them in the refrigerator overnight. You can begin to bake them at 8 am the next morning and wake up to great smelling bread a little after 8:45 am.

 

Product Featured in this Recipe
Black Clay, La Chamba Casserole

Overnight 40% Whole Wheat Bread

Difficulty:

Difficult

Cost:

Fairly cheap




Preparation time
Cooking time
Waiting time 1d

Ingredients

For 4 Person(s)

 

Recipe

  • 4 2/3 cups white flour
  • 3 cups whole wheat flour
  • 2 tbs additional whole wheat flour
  • 3 1/2 cups water
  • 1 1/4 tbsp fine sea salt
  • 3/4 tsp instant dired yeast

Overnight 40% Whole Wheat Bread Directions

  1. Mix
    1. Mix the white flour and the whole wheat flour by hand in a 12 quart or similar round tub container. Add the water heated to 90°F-95°F degrees and mix by hand until it incorporates. Cover and let rest for 20 to 30 minutes.
    2. Sprinkle the salt and yeast evenly over the top of the dough. Mix by hand; wetting your working hand before mixing so the dough doesn’t stick to you. It’s fine to rewet your hands three or four times while you mix). Reach underneath the dough and grab about one-quarter of it. Gently stretch this section of dough and fold it over the top to the other side of the dough. Repeat three more times with remaining dough until the salt and yeast are fully enclosed.
    3. Use the pincer method to fully integrate the ingredients. Using your thumb and forefinger, make five or six pincer cuts across the entire mass of dough. Then fold the dough over itself a few times. Repeat, alternately cutting and folding until all the ingredients are fully integrated and the dough has some tension in it. Let the dough rest for a few minutes, then fold for another 30 seconds or until the dough tightens up. The target dough temperature at the end of the mix is 77°F to 78°F. Cover the tub and let the dough rise.
    4. The dough needs three or four folds. Fold it 2 hours after mixing the dough, so by the time it triples its original volume (about 5 hours after mixing) it’s ready to be divided.
      5. Divide
    5. Moderately flour a work surface about 2 feet wide. Flour your hands and sprinkle a bit around the edges of the tub. Tip the tub slightly and gently work your floured free hand beneath the dough to loosen it from the bottom of the tub. Gently ease the dough out onto the work surface without pulling or tearing it.
    6. With floured hands, pick up the dough and ease it back down onto the work surface in a somewhat even shape. Dust the area in the middle, where you’ll cut the dough into 2 equal-size pieces with a dough knife or plastic dough scraper.
      7. Shape
    7. Dust the inside of a proofing basket with flour. Shape each piece of dough into a medium tight ball and place seam side down in its proofing basket.
      8. Proof
    8. Place each basket in a no perforated plastic bag and refrigerate overnight. The next morning, 12, to 14 hours after the loaves went into the refrigerator, they should be expended but not overflowing their proofing baskets. There should be a 2-hour window when the cold loaves, still in the refrigerator, are optimally proofed. They can go straight from the refrigerator into the oven. There is no need or benefit in allowing them to come to room temperature first.
      9. Bake
    9. Preheat an oven to 475°F and at least 45 minutes prior to baking; put two Black Clay, La Chamba Large 6 qt Casseroles on racks in the oven along with their lids, or in the middle of a wood burning oven. If you are using only one Casserole, you can leave the second loaf in the refrigerator and bake them sequentially.
    10. The next step has to be done carefully so as to not let your hands, fingers, or forearms touch the extremely hot Clay Casserole. Invert the proofed loafs onto a lightly floured countertop, keeping in mind that the top of the loaf will be the side that was facing down while it was rising – seam side down. Use oven mitts to remove the preheated Clay Casseroles from the oven and remove the lids. Carefully place the loaf in the Clay Casserole seam side up. Using the oven mitts again, replace the lid, and place the Clay Casseroles back into the oven. Maintain the temperature at 475F, and in a wood burning oven, adjust the fire to maintain the temperature as close to 475°F as possible.
    11. Bake for 30 minutes, then carefully remove the lids and bake for another 20 to 25 minutes, until at least medium brown all around the loaf. Check after 15 minutes of baking uncovered, in case the temperature is running hot.

Recipe notes

Special thanks to JJ Levy for the Recipe and Photograph


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