Loaf 58 – 9 Grain Wheat in Loaf Pan

Posted on Jul 26, 2012 in loaves

Loaf 58 is an experiment in shaping. We wanted good sandwich bread and love the 9 Grain loaf I make, so I wanted to shape it in a loaf pan rather than a banneton or on a couche.

The dough is mixed the night before and left to autolyze in the fridge overnight. I used flour from a 10 pound bag to mix the dough and ran into something I hadn’t come across before – the flour had large chunks in it. I didn’t notice this as I was weighing the ingredients, but as soon as I started mixing they showed up. After trying awhile to break them apart I gave up, tossed that batch of dough, and started over. This time I sifted the flour to remove the chunks and it worked fine. In researching this, it seems this bag of flour must have gotten damp or too humid at some point.

Clumped flour – had to toss this and start over.

I made enough dough for two loaves, but have only one loaf pan, so I made the second loaf with a banneton. This had the benefit of giving me a “control loaf” to compare against.

I baked the banneton loaf my usual way – on a pizza stone pre-heated to 500° and lowered to 450°. I pour a cup of water in the broiler pan at the bottom of the oven to create steam for the first 18 minutes of baking, which I then vent out.

I baked the loaf pan loaf at 450° without steam. This may have contributed to not getting as much oven pop as I had anticipated.

Banneton and sandwich loaves, pre-proof.

Loaves side by side (but reversed from prior shot).

The interiors of the two baked loaves were very similar, but the loaf pan version was too small for the size loaf pan I used. The finished loaf hadn’t risen enough to adopt the rectangular cross-section of the loaf pan. I’m going to have to make a larger loaf or buy a smaller pan to continue with this experimentation.