Stocking up the Bread

About once each month, I spend my weekend baking bread. This time, I made tortillas, pizza crusts, and multi-grain bread.

Improvisation:

I was running out of flour. So... I used my handy dandy food processor to grind up some oats, millet, and hazlenuts.

I will buy random grains and nuts in bulk from the Whole Foods or the Arab Market, so this is what I had stocked up. The problem with this mixture is that it is high in grain goodness, but low in gluten protein.

Gluten (protein) gives bread elasticity (like a balloon can expand to hold air, so can the loaf if it has enough elasticity) When working with large grains or grains with low gluten content, you need to make up for the shortage somehow. Eggs is one way, I also keep high gluten flour on hand, so that is what I used.

I mixed...

5 cups (approx) of some multigrain mix from my previous loaves (I have no idea what all was in it, I think some spelt, wheat, and white flour)

2 -3 cups oat flour with lots of gluten mixed in (probably 1/4 cup doesn't matter though, all gluten flour comes with its own instructions for mixing b/c it is made with different proportions of protein)

1 cup of millet

1/2 cup ground hazlenut meal

1 cup white flour during kneeding

I used my standard ratio of yeast, water, salt, sugar, and oil. (from the "Video Bread" Guy)


The bread is good, however, it is VERY dense. I could have used twice as much gluten and still probably would have had a pretty dense loaf, just comes with the territory with those whole grains and nuts.