New Method! 100 Percent Whole Wheat Food Processor Bread
Before Hawaii: a story and recipe from The Baking Wizard!
A loaf of 100 percent whole wheat bread has never been easier to make thanks to food processor power. Just 3 minutes of processing, a series of risings, and a stint in the oven will give you a sandwich loaf of unequaled taste and texture.
The Whole Wheat Puzzle
Back in the early 1980s, when I first began working for Cuisinart as their national spokesperson, one of my responsibilities was to develop new recipes for the food processor. I loved bread, all sorts of bread, but the one that challenged me the most was 100 percent whole wheat bread. I had no luck making a light-textured sandwich loaf until I tried doing the job with the food processor. A whole wheat kernel is about 80 percent protein and carbohydrate (endosperm), 17 percent bran (fiber), and 3% wheat germ (proteins and fats). I felt that if I could soften the bran sufficiently so that its sharp edges wouldn't damage the developing gluten molecules during kneading, there just may be a chance for my idea to work. By 1987 I had a formula and procedure that worked, but still needed a bit of tweaking.
So I left things alone and re-began my quest a couple of years ago. And just this year, I have a recipe and a way of mixing the ingredients in a food processor that produces the lightest-textured whole wheat sandwich loaf I've ever had. The resulting dough is wet, sticky, and very elastic. It will look like a mess and you will think that something must be very wrong. But it's just the opposite. You want a sticky messy shapeless dough. Here's how to shape this dough into a loaf. And one bit of really good news is you can make this bread in even the basic food processor with a 7-cup capacity.
During my six years with Cuisinart, the machines I used included: DLC-10 (7-cup), DLC-8 (11-cup) and DLC-7 (14-cup). There was a larger machine, too, the DLC-X, with a 20-cup capacity, but that model tended to be the favorite of restaurant and bakery owners. You can double the recipe here if you have such a machine. The loaf in the picture above is about 6 inches tall. Magnificent! I'll have step by step photos to guide you along as you make this bread. You will need a kitchen scale for this recipe. So let's bake!