My youngest son is approaching 7 (sometimes it feels like 17), and he is still a bit fussy when it comes to food. He typically likes all the boring, conventional, store bought white bread. He even likes the fast milk white bread we occasionally make in the bread machine. So, I decided to try a white bread using the same techniques I have been using until now. The only bit of whole wheat flour would be that used in the production of the leaven.

The recipe looks like this:

• 200g leaven – produced using:
• 30g starter
• 90ml water
• 60g of white flour
• 60g of whole wheat flour
• 700ml warm water
• 1000g white bread flour
• 18g salt

I followed the usual steps, with rests after mixing, turns every 3-40 minutes for 7-8 hours, splitting the loaves, bench rest, final shaping, and then placing them in the bowls in the refrigerator overnight.

What stood out, was that for some reason, the dough seemed too wet still. Even with all the working it got, it pancaked a bit at the bench rest. At final baking, it was not firm, and was difficult to score without dragging the dough along with the blade. The resulting loaves did not rise as high as I would have liked, and the first we opened had a fairly large empty space in the middle, like a spacious cavern.

I am not quite sure what went wrong here, but I will have to investigate and see if I can resolve the problem. I am beginning to think that the dough was still too wet. Since I have been using 700ml of water for my mixed grain doughs, that notoriously require more water than white flour doughs, I probably need to reduce the water to 650ml or even 600ml.

Still, like all these breads, the resulting product was delicious. Here are some pictures: