Bread additives
Since I'm starting my 3-month bread machine odyssey, any suggestions for things to try out would be welcome.
Cooking with whole grain flours in a bread machine often leads to bread that is a little heavy for sandwiches, so I'm going to try adding some vital wheat gluten. No one in the house is allergic to wheat, though we try to limit our intake because its in everything, so a couple tablespoons per loaf isn't going to hurt anything.
I've switched to using mostly honey or molasses for sweetner in my breads, and I really like the results. I think I'd like to try malted barley to provide the enzymes to produce sugars for the yeast from the flour.
Any recommendations on using these ingredients? Any other suggestions that I should try for making interesting, healthy loaves in a bread machine?
That's worth finding out which work in bread machines. In addition to the ones you listed, I want to try flax, hemp and chia seeds. I know I like flax and hemp in bread, but I haven't tried chia. Sprouted (but not malted) grains could add some other interesting textures and flavors. Adding other fiber sources could also be a dietary bonus, but it might have a negative impact on the gluten. I'm surprised that amaranth required steaming, as its such a tiny seed.
I added 2 tablespoons of Bob's Red Mill vital wheat gluten to the loaf last night, and it definitely improved the rise and texture. I wish the machine I have had adjustable knead and rise times. Spelt gluten just isn't as tough as wheat gluten. I also swapped half a cup of rolled oats for half a cup of flour. Again, it didn't come out as good as it would if it was hand made, and the texture still needs work, but the flavor beat the heck out of store bought flavour.
The Amaranth seeds would have a good texture without the steaming but there would not be any extra flavour to the finished bread. Toasting the amaranth seeds gave some of the nutty flavour but steaming them for a few minutes brought forward more of the malty flavour that I liked in the bread.
I just got Peter Reinhart's whole grain bread book, and plan to try a lot of his ideas. Many of them won't work for bread machine loaves, but some of them might. I'm getting some sprouting caps for some of my mason jars, and I'm going to sprout some grains to add. Starting with a mash or a soak wouldn't be that much extra work either. They are all more work, and require more planning, than just starting up the bread machine, but it's worth coming up with some more options for when I have the time.
For the last few loaves, I have been adding 1/4 cup of vital wheat gluten to the spelt to get the texture that I like. Today, I accidentally added 1/2 cup, and ended up with a 7 inch tall loaf, with that light fluffy commercial bread texture. It was an interesting accidental experiment, but I prefer my bread a little sturdier than that. It also muted the nuttiness of the spelt.
I had a lot of fun a few years back playing with different nuts, seeds, whole grains and legumes in my loaves. Trying to find out which methods of pre-cooking (oven roasting, pan toasting, steaming, frying, boiling) the different items to get the most flavour and best texture in the finished loaf took a bit of experimentation.
Most tree nuts, seeds and rolled grains worked best if they were oven roasted before baking - expecially sesame seeds where you would get practically no flavour without first heating them to almost 400F. Millet, quinoa and amaranth were the exceptions - they did better with steaming. Large whole grains (wheat berries, barley, oats, etc.), rice, lentils, peas and black beans worked better if they were steamed instead of soaked or boiled. Larger legumes needed to be soaked and boiled until they were almost done and then baked in fairly wet doughs to finish cooking.
How do adding these kinds of items work in bread machine loaves?