Whole Wheat Atta Bread

                                                                                                                                        

Bakes - some of my most loved recipes where I can learn and explore a lot of new techniques. Baking a bread is no less than wonder and when you can make it with whole wheat flour and no egg - its a wonder . One of the good recipes where you know it is olive oil for cooking.

Ingredients:-

Whole Wheat Atta – 3 + 1/2 cups

Warm water – 1+ 1/4 cup

Sugar – ¼ cup

Salt – 2 tsp

Instant active yeast – 2 tsp

Oil – ¼ cup

Milk – 1/4  cup

Method:-

1.      In a bowl, take some water from the already measured water and add total yeast and 1 tbsp sugar from the totally measured sugar

2.      Mix and cover with a cloth. Let it rest for 10 -15 minutes. Yeast will activate and prove up. If it doesn’t prove, do not move ahead in baking. Get another pack of yeast and re-do the same step.

3.      Now add all the remaining ingredients in this proved yeast batter and make a dough. Dough will be soft. Dough will be really soft - do not worry and end up adding additional atta. If done, this will make dry and cracked toastie bread

4.      Cover with a cloth and rest it for 40 – 60 minutes. The total dough will rise to double or more quantity. This is 1^st proving stage of the dough.

5.      Now punch the dough and take the same on a flat surface. Grease hands with oil and start kneading a dough by tearing technique. Tearing technique makes a use of two palms where one palm stretches the in one direction forwards and other palm pushes the dough backwards. Roll back and collect dough again and follow the palm tearing technique. This is the most important step since this ensures gluten formation in dough. This step should be done precisely for 15-20 minutes. During the entire stage, you will witness transformation of dough tremendously where it will be more supple, with higher elasticity and totally smooth texture. At the end of this process, take a very small piece and flatten between fingers and pull the dough apart – it will not break and instead will stretch due to high elasticity induced by so formed gluten.

6.      Now grease the bread tin and keep aside. The Tin is used is 9" x 4" x 4"( Lx Wx H)

7.      Measure the length and tin and accordingly you shall roll out the dough into a cylindrical shape.

8.      While rolling, where ever you see, the dough is opening up – pinch it and close the opening. Roll again smoothening the outer surface while closing the openings by pinching. This step shall take 3-5 minutes and also will add more gluten while rolling the dough back and forth.

9.      Now put the dough in the bread tin and press it evenly at all ends. It should half or even less than half in thickness as compared to the thickness /height of the tin. I had put a dough that only covered a little more than 1" of the tin in the thickness and then it had started rising while being covered with normal cloth. Give milk wash once before your cover it with cloth

                                          

10.   Now cover and let it sit for 1- 2 hours. It will raise 1” above the tin level. This ideally shall happen in 50 -60 minutes if all steps followed properly.

                                         

  

11.   Now pre-heat the oven at 180 degrees and bake for 30-40 minutes. You shall see bread rising a little more and sides of the bread leaving the tin.

12.   Remove from oven, keep aside for 20 – 30 minutes for it to cool.

                                     

  

13.   De-mould the bread and butter /oil the upper layer and cover in damp cloth for atleast 45 minutes – 1 hour. This shall ensure the release of heat from the bread and also ensure that the moisture is intact.

  

14.   Ready to use is your Whole Wheat Atta Bread.

Note:

With this recipe since I knew that each step has been well executed, I made the bread and also a ladi of 9 paav. So if your techniques at each stage are right, with the so measured measurements mentioned in the recipe, you can make a big loaf and ladi paav too as 1" and 3 cm of dough so put in the bread tin, rises 1" above the 4" high tin