KAMUT de Mie

This KAMUT de Mie has a very mild and wheaty flavor.

Pain de Mie means “bread of the crumb.” I like that description, but this version, made with KAMUT, could be described as “bread with a delicious, melt-in-your-mouth crumb that’s great for toasting.” 

I enjoy experimenting with ancient grains. I’ve used whole grain KAMUT flour in several breads, but I hadn’t tried KAMUT white flour yet so I wanted to see how it would perform in breads that are usually made with modern white bread flour.

KAMUT white flour is actually creamy-colored. It’s a beautiful grain and makes a lovely flour.

Whole Grain KAMUT

KAMUT White Flour

In my research, I’ve found differing opinions on where some of the ancient grains originated and how they are classified. The official KAMUT web site has a wealth of interesting information and the classification makes sense to me, bearing in mind, I’m not an expert on wheat.

Basically, all wheat belongs to the genus Triticum, but the classifications differ based on the number of chromosomes. Khorasan Wheat (KAMUT brand) has 28 chromosomes as opposed to the 42 chromosomes found in modern wheat. I had read about the differing chromosomes in some of my previous research, but didn’t realize that KAMUT, like emmer, only has 28. There’s much more to wheat than meets the eye.

 

KAMUT de Mie (Pain De Mie made with KAMUT Flour)

Adapted from: The Fundamental Techniques of Classic Bread Baking by The French Culinary Institute

Makes: Two Medium (8 1/2” x 4 1/2”) Loaves

This bread started out at 60% hydration, but it was too dry. The KAMUT flour absorbed the milk so much that it ended up being about 78% hydration. I had heard that KAMUT had a greater absorption rate than modern bread flour. Now, I can attest to that. It wasn’t a wet dough. It was dreamy or maybe I should say creamy to work with.

 

Ingredients:

• 553g KAMUT white flour
• 433g Cold Almond milk
• 55g (4 T) unsalted butter, softened
• 9g instant yeast
• 22g sugar
• 11g salt

 

Method:

In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the flour, half of the milk, the softened butter, yeast, sugar, and salt. Mix on low speed using the dough hook for 5 minutes. Gradually add in more milk as necessary until there are no dry bits of flour. Increase the speed to medium and mix until the dough comes together.  It will be slightly sticky.

Transfer the dough to a lightly greased bowl.  Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a kitchen towel and let it ferment at room temperature for 1 hour.

 

Lightly flour a work surface and remove the dough from the bowl.  Divide it into two pieces using a sharp knife or bench knife. Cover the pieces with plastic and let them bench rest for 15 minutes.

 

Lightly butter two medium loaf pans.  I used two 8.5 by 4.5-inch glass loaf pans.

Uncover the dough again and lightly flour the work surface, if necessary. Gently press out the dough to degas it and shape each piece into a round. Shape the rounds into batards and place each batard into a buttered loaf pan. Cover the loaves with plastic wrap and let them rise for 90 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

Make the egg wash by combining the egg with 1 tablespoon of water and whisk together in a small bowl until blended.

Using a pastry brush, coat the tops of the risen loaves with the egg wash.  You’re supposed to do this lightly.  I may have overdone it with the egg wash because the crust got a little darker than I anticipated.

Transfer the loaves to the preheated oven and bake for 35 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown and shiny. The sides should be firm to the touch.

Remove the loaves from the oven.  If you are using glass pans, let the loaves cool for 5 to 10 minutes in the pan before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

 

 

Since the weather has been unseasonably cold, I was craving tomato soup and grilled cheese.  Pain de Mie is the perfect bread for grilled cheese (or toasted cheese as we referred to it growing up).

The KAMUT flour performed really well for this test. It makes a great toast bread.

I’m sharing these loaves with:

BYOB - Il Cestino del Pane

Yeastspotting

 

Happy Baking

Cathy

Pullman Bread: Mellow Bakers

The final bread in the Mellow Bakers’ lineup for January is Pullman Bread. Pullman Bread gets its name from it’s former use on the long distance Pullman trains in the United States. In France, however, it is referred to as pain de mie, or “bread of crumb,” because it has very little crust. It is usually baked in a rectangular straight-sided pullman pan which gives it a firm crust and a delicious crumb.  It makes excellent toast!

Most of the Pullman Breads that I’ve seen are made with all white bread flour and are similar to the Simple Milk Loaf I made a few days ago. However, I have seen a few versions that include a portion of whole wheat flour in addition to the white bread flour. Since I had just made an all white sandwich bread, I wanted something different. So I made my version using white bread flour and about 35% clear flour.

Clear flour is flour that clears the first sifting (to separate out the bran and germ).  It still retains some of the finer bran fiber from the outer endosperm of the wheat berry and is thus coarser and contains higher levels of ash. It is usually made from very strong, high-protein wheat. I used whole wheat flour home-milled from hard red spring wheat for this bread. Hard red spring wheat has a higher level of protein than hard red winter wheat due to the shorter growing season.

Here is the sifted bran. I saved it for use in another recipe.  

 

Light Wheat Pullman Bread

Adapted from Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes by Jeffrey Hamelman

Makes: 1 pullman loaf with dough left over for 1 small loaf

Ingredients:

• 4 3/4 cups bread flour
• 2 1/2 cups whole wheat bread flour (sifted once to remove the bran)
• 5 tablespoons milk powder
• 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
• 3 tablespoons butter, softened
• 2 3/4 – 2 7/8 cups water (lukewarm)
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 2 1/4 instant or active dry yeast

 

Directions:

Mixing: Mix all of the ingredients in a spiral mixer until they are thoroughly incorporated.  The dough consistency should be medium.  You want to develop a fairly strong gluten network.  Desired dough temperature is 78 to 80 degrees F.

Bulk Fermentation: Cover the dough with plastic wrap or a linen towel and let it ferment in the bowl for 2 hours. Fold the dough once, after 1 hour of fermentation. 

This is the dough after 1 hour of fermentation.  I folded the dough and put it back in the bowl.

I was doing other things while the dough was fermenting so I let it ferment a little bit longer than the suggested 2 hours.  This is what the dough looked like after 2 1/4 hours. Oops!

Dividing and Shaping: Divide the dough into appropriate-sized pieces. My pullman pan measures 13 by 3-1/4 by 3-3/4 inches so I used 2.25 pounds of dough and had about 1 pound or so left over.  I preshaped two pieces (one big and one small) into rounds, covered them with plastic, and let them rest on an unfloured counter for about 15 to 20 minutes.

Then I shaped the big round into a long cylinder with no tapers at the ends.

I placed the dough in the pullman pan to rise.  The dough came about halfway up the sides.  Maybe a little bit more.

I slid the lid on it and hoped for the best.  I put it in the oven with the light on to rise for about an hour to an hour and a half as the recipe suggested.

Well, it rose all right. Right out of the pan. It didn’t take an hour. It oozed out of the lid and made a big mess.  Fortunately, I had greased the pan and lid really well so the clean up was fairly easy. After I had removed the sunken dough from the pan, I reshaped it and put it back in the pan to rise. I figured I might as well try it and see what happened.

In the meantime, I had shaped the smaller dough ball into an oval shape (sort of).

It rose really well so I scored it and let it rest on the counter while the oven preheated to 400 degrees F.

When the oven had preheated, I placed the loaf on the middle rack with a steam pan underneath. 

I baked the loaf until it was golden brown and sounded hollow when thumped on the bottom.  It was delicious!

Now, it was time to check the pullman bread again to see if it had risen enough but not too much this time.  It’s supposed to rise within 1/2 inch from the top of the pan.  There you go…

I slid the lid back on and baked the loaf at 400 degrees F for 40 to 45 minutes.  Then, I slid the lid off to see if it had an even golden brown color all around and a perfectly even crust.  Voila!

I removed the loaf from the pan as soon as I took it out of the oven.  If you leave these loaves in the pans, they will sweat from condensation and that would mess up the nice firm crust.

After the loaf had cooled, I cut it into slices and put the slices into two bags.  It’s a long bread so it made about 24 slices.  I froze one bag and I’ve been enjoying the other pieces toasted with jam for breakfast.  I’ve also had a slice or two with peanut butter. It passed the test!

This was a very forgiving dough. It performed well even when I overproofed it.  It has a terrific flavor.  This is definitely a keeper.  My taste tester really liked it as well.

 

This bread has been YeastSpotted. Please visit Wild Yeast to view all of the lovely breads in the roundup.

The Mellow Bakers are baking breads from Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes by Jeffrey Hamelman. Feel free to join us.

 

Thanks for visiting the Bread Experience bread-baking blog.  I hope you’ll join me again soon.

Happy Baking!
Cathy