Hello everyone!
I'm new to this forum and wasn't positive if this was the right spot to post this.
I've recently started baking bread (about a month ago) and was wondering if using the water from boiled eggs (for it's calcium) would help me achieve a less crumbly 40% whole wheat flour bread. I heard in a podcast that calcium assists gluten strand development. The bread I've been making so far has been too dry and it falls apart easily. I had the idea earlier to add the water from my boiled eggs to my dough in order to help my bread come out better. Do you think this will help?
Here's where I am so far:
60/40 mix of AP / whole wheat
70% water from boiled eggs
2% salt
. 6 % active dry yeast (which I bought before I knew instant dry existed)
2% butter
4% honey
4% whole milk
So,
600g AP
400g Wheat
20g salt
6g active dry yeast
40g honey
20g milk
I heated the water from the eggs to 115°F and poured approx. 4oz of the water into a small bowl and the poured the yeast on top of it and set this aside.
I mixed the salt, butter, honey, milk and remaining water (now at 125°F) in a large bowl and set it aside to cool.
Next I mixed in about 2 cups of the whole wheat flour to the mixing bowl and the added my spices (some nutmeg and cinnamon just for depth) and the stirred in the yeast mixture and remaining wheat flour.
I then added the AP flour until the dough was workable enough to pull from the bowl and put it on my moderately floured table and began kneading in the remaining AP flour for about ten minutes on my exceeding it by about 1 Tbsp. Which I added to assure my gluten development was good.
I did a windowpane test and it looked good, nice and see through (to a point) so I greased a bowl and set in the dough to rest for about 45 minutes over my oven which is on warm.
Im literally baking this rendition now, with my previous loaf being about half the size and having a 60/40 mix of mostly wheat flour and a 66% hydration. It also did not have milk.
Anyway, my plan is to pull the dough from the bowl then compress the air out of it, cut it in half and then shape two loafs, and let them sit for 45 more minutes. After which I will put them in the oven at 375°F for 30 minutes then brush them with eggwash and cook them for another 15 minutes at 350° until hollow sounding
Am I missing anything or does anyone have any advice? Sorry for the long post, too, I've just been wanting to post about this since my first loaf.
Thanks in advance!
Oh yeah, I'm Chase, by the way.