Hello! I've been exploring the site over the past month, and it's been very informational on helping me enhance my baking skills. I have been baking bread 2-4 times per week just out of addiction lately, and am pretty comfortable creating my own formulas with the information I learned from the podcasts. In general, I've had great success.
So two nights ago, I decided to try milling my own flour in a vitamix. I mixed 175 grams of white spring wheat with 325 grams of hard red winter wheat, and left all the germ/bran in the flour. The flour was pretty germy, but seemed fine enough beyond that. I took 500 grams of this mixture, and mixed it with 300 grams of water and .08% yeast (.4 grams) to make a biga preferment. I allowed an 18 hour fermentation at room temp ( 68-70F), then mixed in an additional 425 grams of water, 10 grams of salt, and 500 grams of flour mixed at the same ratio, except that I sifted out the germ for the bulk fermentation of the final dough. I did throw in another pinch of yeast at that point, hoping to help the rise considering that it is a 100% whole grain loaf. I only mixed as much as necessary to evenly distribute the biga, and then allowed bulk fermentation at 77F for 2.5 hours, performing a stretch and fold every 30 minutes. I then took half the dough, formed a boule, bench rested, tension pulled, and placed in a cloth lined collander dusted with rice flour to proof. It proofed faster than expected (1 hour, 20 minutes). I transferred it to my peel, scored, and slid it onto the baking stone a little too early, because the temp was only just at 400F when I put it in, and I was afraid to wait longer for fear of overproofing. I create steam by adding water to a preheated cast iron skillet at the first 15-20 minutes of baking. In the end, the loaf spread laterally, rather than up, but did open on the scores about an inch or so. Crumb is ok, but I would have preferred an upward spring.
The other half of the dough has been in my fridge for the past 18 hours, and I want to bake it tomorrow. My question is, do you think that the gluten structure will have improved over that extra, retarded fermentation in the fridge? I had been thinking to use that dough as a preferment itself, and add an additional 500 grams of commercial whole wheat bread flour, or mayber 250g w/w and 250 white bread flour, keeping the hydration at around 72.5%, but trying to achieve some additional strength by adding those flours. The down side is that I will lose the flavor of that 100% fresh milled flour. Any advice? Further, if I do add more flour, and only bake half of the resulting dough, can I keep the dough active like that? For example, use the same dough every couple of days to add fresh flour (fermentable sugar), and have a mother dough of sorts? Would there be a flavor enhancement or loss from this? Would it eventually turn itself into sourdough? Thanks!