#wheaten bread

[haveyoueatenthis]

Have you eaten wheaten bread?

Yes, and I liked it

Yes, and I didn't like it

No

I haven't heard of it

Voting ended onDec 18, 2023

[rachiller]

Made wheaten bread today 😌

[joestpierrephoto]

This recipe for a dense, Northern Irish-style bread calls for both bread flour and whole wheat flour, as well as buttermilk, sugar, and margarine.

[dduane]

Hello, Diane! Do you by chance happen to have Peter’s mum’s brown bread/wheaten soda bread recipe written out in grams? I was poking around the EC website and the white version is in grams but the wheaten seems to only come in cups and I suspect my lack of success with it might be helped if I could weigh things out consistently. It would be much appreciated if you happen to have it around! Many thanks! (Also, can one use any whole-wheat flour assuming you don’t over-work it or is high-gluten whole-wheat bread flour going to make a tough bread no matter what you do?)

OMG, so sorry this got buried: everything's been unusually busy with all the projects on the desk at the moment, and a lot of the food stuff has gone by the boards for most of the month or so.

First of all: Any whole wheat / wholemeal flour you want to use for this is fine, but (as you say) don't overwork it. Speed, as usual, is of the essence. The white flour also should be "plain" and not bread flour, which would just be wasted in this.

The original recipe gives us --

4 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup white flour

Scant 1/2 cup oatmeal

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1 teaspoon salt

2-3 cups sour milk or buttermilk

I nipped in and checked the weights. Four (standard / US 8 fluid-ounce measuring) cups of the wholemeal flour -- I was using Howards' "OneWay" wholemeal, which is really nice stuff if you can lay hands on it -- came to 550g. 1 cup of the plain flour came to 160g. The oatmeal (using oat flakes here rather than pinhead oats) came to about 40g. So, a total of 750g of mixed dry ingredients.

...Thanks for reminding me that this needed to be converted, anyway. We're just on the point of starting to move the contents of the European Cuisines site off the Drupal platform and into its new Wordpress site, and I expect to take the next couple of weeks cursing and swearing and wrestling with SSL certificates and endless other webmastering crap. (In fact as soon as we're done here I have to go update Drupal core, ideally [please Thoth...] for the last time. We can only hope...)

Anyway, let me know how you get on with this. :)

[lawmarkuk]

Back to porridge: oats... and other ingredients

Prep Time: 10 min 

Cooking Time: 50 min

Ingredients

A. Neill’s Coarse Wholemeal Flour (1lb)

B. Flahavan’s Porridge Oats (2oz)

C. Wheat Bran (2oz)

D. Wheat Germ (2oz)

E. Sugar (1 tsp)

F. Salt (2 tsp)

G. Bicarbonate of Soda (2 tsp)

H. Buttermilk (1 pint)

I.  Egg (x1)

J. Toasted Sesame Seeds (1/2 oz) 

Method

Mix dry ingredients (A-G) in bowl

Add (H.) Buttermilk 

and (I.) Egg

Mix well with a wooden spatula

Transfer to 2x lightly oiled 1lb baking tins

Dust top with (J.) Toasted Sesame Seeds

Bake in a preheated oven at 180oC for 40 mins

Turn loaves in baking tins and bake for further 10 mins 

Wrap loaves in a moist tea-towel to cool 

... Enjoy!

[dduane]

BTW, for those of you interested in yesterday’s wheaten bread recipe: I rebaked it just now to make sure all the proportions were correct. This one was done with 2.5 cups of buttermilk. Seems to have worked out fine.

[dduane]

The last couple of times I've been to the UK/ROI, I've run across a delicious object termed "wheaten bread." I am a reasonably accomplished baker and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to recreate this foodstuff. I think it's a quick-not-yeast bread, because the crumb is very dense, and whole wheat flour of some variety seems likely, since it's dark, and I want oat flour to be involved because it's got a kind of nutty aroma, but -- do you know of a recipe for this? WHAT IS IT????

This is almost certainly a variety of brown soda bread, which goes by many different names here. “Wheaten bread” is one of the Northern Irish variations, though you do see/ hear it elsewhere. (ETA: Just rebaked it: see the image at the bottom of this post.)

This is our recipe from the soda bread page (now being reorganized) at EuropeanCuisines.com:

For “Brown soda” / “wheaten bread”:

4 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup white flour

Scant ½ cup oatmeal

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1 teaspoon salt

2-3 cups sour milk or buttermilk

There are two main styles of soda bread, “cake” (baked in the oven in a single loaf, usually round) and “farl” (rolled out into a flat circle, quartered, and baked on a griddle). While you do occasionally see brown farl, it’s fairly rare. Wheaten bread / brown soda is normally baked as cake. So, from the page’s mixing/baking instructions:

Sift the dry ingredients together at least once or twice to make sure the bicarbonate of soda is evenly distributed. Put the sifted dry ingredients in a good big bowl (you want stirring room) and make a well in the center.

Pour about three-quarters of the buttermilk or sour milk or whatever in, and start stirring. You are trying to achieve a dough that is raggy and very soft, but the lumps and rags of it should look dryish and “floury”, while still being extremely squishy if you poke them. Add more liquid sparingly if you think you need it. (You may need more or less according to conditions: local humidity and temperature, the absorptiveness of the flour you’re using, etc.)

Blend quickly (but not too energetically!) until the whole mass of dough has become this raggy consistency. Then turn the contents of the bowl out immediately onto a lightly floured board or work surface, and start to knead.

The chief concern here is speed: the chemical reaction of the bicarb with the buttermilk started as soon as they met, and you want to get the bread into the oven while the reaction is still running on “high”. Don’t overknead! You do not want the traditional “smooth, elastic” ball of dough you would expect with a yeast bread. You simply want one that contains almost everything that went into the bowl, in one mostly cohesive lump.

…For cake, flatten the lump of dough to a slightly domed circle or flat hemisphere about 6-8 inches in diameter, and put it on the baking sheet (which should be dusted lightly with flour first). Then use a very sharp knife to cut a cross right across the circle. The cuts should go about halfway down through the sides of the circle of dough, so that the loaf will “flower” properly.

Put the cake’s baking sheet into the preheated oven. Bake for 45 minutes at 400-450° F. (One of our Irish neighbors suggests you give it the first 10 minutes at 450°, then decrease to 400°. Also, if you have a fan oven, use temperatures 10° lower or so, as fan ovens have a tendency to run hot.)

At the end of 45 minutes, pick up the loaf and tap the bottom. A hollow-ish sound means it’s done. For a very crunchy crust, put on a rack to cool. For a softer crust, as above, wrap the cake in a clean dishcloth as soon as it comes out of the oven. (Once cooled, to help the crust calm down further, put it in a plastic bag overnight.)

That’s all she wrote. (Actually, she wrote a lot more: it’s over here. The page is a bit disorganized-looking at the moment; we just changed themes and it’ll be reorganized over the next day or so.)

[philosophybistro]

Wheaten Bread (Irish Brown Bread)

Wheaten Bread

On our first day in Ireland, for our very first meal in Europe, we had breakfast at the Railway Hotel. Besides some marvelous tea and incredible service, we also had some toast, which included a brown bread. My foodie daughter was in love. “Wouldn’t it be ironic,” she asked, “if after going through Germany and France, my favorite bread ended up being Irish Brown Bread, and my favorite cheese…

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