Bread Log 5: Whole-Wheat Bread with Hazelnuts and Currants

'Ello again all.  In spite of the fact that I have never made this particular whole wheat bread recipe, I feel like I am stepping back on to more familiar ground.  Like one of my standby sourdough formulas, it is at its core, a whole wheat bread utilizing 50% whole-wheat flour and 50% bread flour.  The major difference is that this uses commercial yeast and a pate fermentee preferement totalling 25% flour weight, while my sourdough uses only my starter for leavening and only has 15% of its volume prefermented.

Now that I have alienated most of my readers by geeking out on preferement percentages in the first two sentences I'll get back to the task at hand.  I opted for the second set of additions Hamelman suggested for this dough, Hazelnuts and Currants, as I have used neither nuts nor fruit on the blog so far.  As far as additions go, they are pretty easy to deal with. 
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I roasted the Hazelnuts and then rubbed them to remove the outer skin (like the skin of a peanut), and made sure they were cool before adding them to the dough.
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  As for the currants, I soaked them in water for about half an hour and then drained them in a colander, to help keep them from becoming overly chewy or miniature charcoal briquettes.
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I mixed the dough as per normal, that is, without the additions, to bring it to the desired development.  Once that was done I cut the dough one final time and added the currants and hazelnuts in stages with each chunk of dough, to expedite the incorporation.  With all the ingredients back in the bowl it only took about 20 seconds of slow speed mixing to ensure they were well distributed.

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The dough came out a bit warmer than I had intended and so I shortened the hypothetical 2 hour bulk fermentation by about 20 minutes, and it seemed to stave off the doughs attempts to balloon up to epic proportions.  Apart from that the dough was very easy to work with and everything came off with little calamity.  Because it is difficult to capture the process of shaping the dough through pictures I asked Whit to use our lil' flip video to film me shaping the batards for todays bake.  Prior to the clip you'll see, the dough had been divided into thirds, degassed, then rounded into rough boules (dividing and first shaping).  Here is the footage of the second shaping of the third batard:
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As part of my continuing quest to increase the finished volume of my loaves, I followed through on my promise from Breaducation 2.  The recommended bench proof for the loaves was 1-1.5 hours.  So I baked off the first loaf after ~40 minutes, the second at ~1:10, and the third at ~1:40.  Here are some pictures to compare the results, I slashed the first loaf once, the second twice, and the third thrice so you can see which is which in any photo:
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This is loaf 1
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This is loaf 2
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This is loaf 3
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On the left is loaf 1 pre-bake and on the right is loaf 3.  The difference in pre-bake volume is quite large.  To give you a point of comparison, that is the same piece of parchment paper under both loaves. You can see loaf three is actually spilling off of it.
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Here is a side by side from the front of loaf 1 (on the left) and loaf 2 (on the right).  The volume for both loaves is pretty good, though loaf 1 has the lead.
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Finally here is an overhead shot of all three loaves side by side.  All three loaves were within half an once of weight of one another, so you can see how what a difference the extra bench proof time made in total size of loaf. Loaf 1 is definitely underproofed, and loaf 2 may have been as well if only slightly.  Loaf 3 by contrast was a bit overproofed by the time his turn came around, but not so much so that it bottomed out completely.   Here are 2 final shots of the 3 loaves nicely arranged and the crumb from loaf 1:
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Here are the details from the bake:
Room Temp: 71.6
Water Temp: 86.0
Flour Temp: 71.6 (WW) & 70.7 (BF)
Preferment Temp: 74.3
Final Temp: 80.6
Autolyse: 20 min
Mix: 3 minutes on speed 2, followed by cut on bench, followed by 3 minutes on speed 2, followed by cut on bench, followed by 3 minutes on speed 2, finished with incorporation of currants and hazelnuts
Bulk Fermentation: 1.5 hours with one fold at 20 minutes and one at 55
Bench Proof: shape, 10 minute rest, shape, 40, 70, 100 minutes respectively
Bake: ~30 minutes @ 450 degrees
Steam: New Steamer used pre-load and for ~30 seconds post load

One last note to my friends around the Twin Cities metro.  If you would like to eat some of the breads you are reading about on the blog, shoot me an e-mail and I'll add you to the bread queue.  I am making more than Whit and I can use, and I love to spread the love.  So just say the word if you are interested.  Thanks as always for reading.

-Vino