'Merican Style Honey Wheat/Rye

We all need a diversion, especially in baking. I've been working on my lean breads quite a bit lately. The lean crusty breads are by far the most challenging. Once in while, I get the urge to take a walk on the dark side. Today, I used a full yeast charge, shortening (butter) and sweetener (honey). Maybe I shouldn't sweat it. After all, there exists a French style called Viennoise that uses all these dastardly additives.

American Style Wheat or Viennoise? Depends on the demographic of your cocktail party I guess.

Here's the recipe:
water, 200 g
bleached white flour (Pillsbury all purpose), 250 g
wheat/rye mix (1:1 w/w), 50 g
butter, 1 T
honey, 30 g (1.5 T)
yeast (Fleischmann's for machines), 1.5 t
salt, 1 t
sunflower seeds, handful

Straight dough method, first rise 60 min, 2nd rise 25 min, 3rd rise (proof) 40 min in pan, slashed top of loaf, and baked in abundantly pre-heated 425-deg-F oven (short blast of steam) for 25 minutes. Awesome volume (that's the bleached white for ya). Popped the loaf out of the pan and let it sit out overnight to cool. We'll give details of the tasting tomorrow.

Update:
The loaf was unbelievable. Our favorite store brand for sandwiches is Brownberry Oat Bread. Very good, but this makes that look sick. The only problem is the pan was a tad undersized. The pan I used for this much dough (roughly 560 g) holds 1200 mL of water. I remade the same loaf (using 230 grams white flour, 50 grams of wheat/rye mix, 20 grams of rolled oats and a handful of walnuts, but same everything else) and used a pan of volume I600 mL. This was much more appropriate. The loaf rose above the rim of the pan but didn't mushroom way over the pan. Selecting the right pan size per unit of dough is tricky. For a pan that held 1600 mL water, I'd probably use 600 g of dough next time.

This recipe was really one of the best I've ever done and is really easy, a great starter recipe. But use bleached (Pillsbury All Purpose) flour. I haven't tried Gold Medal yet but will in the future. The bleached flour seems to give a great volume rise and a great texture. And it's just not that evil to use a bleached flour. Especially when it's mixed with a bunch of grains and nuts.