Slightly Over-Proofed Whole Wheat Olive Boule

My on-going bread experiments are continuing (and are a lot of fun). One thing I am enjoying about my most recent round of dedicated baking is that the family is really enjoying my whole wheat bread—rather than just tolerating it because it’s healthy. To some  degree I think that I because we have all been eating a great deal more whole wheat bread over the past few years and everyone has come to like it, and (hopefully) I am getting better at bread baking.

I tried a couple of variations on the basic whole whole wheat yeast bread that I have been using. Here is the recipes:

1 kg white whole wheat flour
10 grams yeast
20 grams of salt
4 tablespoons (I need to start converting that to grams) olive oil
40 gram of grated parmesan
110 grams of chopped Kalamata olives
71 grams (71% hydration) water

That means that I added an additional 60 grams of water for a more highly hydrated dough, along with the cheese and more olives. Overall, the bread came out pretty well, with a couple of comments. The more hydrated dough was faster to rise, so that I got my timing off.  The shaped loaves were peaking and starting to show signs of stress while I was waiting for my oven to cool. One going up and the other going dow. By the time my oven had cools to bread baking temperature, the loaves were pretty fragile, and they started to collapse a little bit when I slashed them with the razor blade. Again, they worked out nicely, but you can see the imperfection. Live and learn.

Finally, 110 grams of chopped olives was better than the handful that I used a few batches ago, but still not enough, and I could hardly tell that I had added the Parmesan. I have more to learn about cheese and bread.