Whole Grain Pain de Mie

I know its been a month since Christmas, but I just got around to using my pain de mie bread pan this weekend. I have been meaning to make my own sandwich bread ever since I got the pain, but it still hadn't happened. Well, I ran out of my normal sandwich bread and it was a Sunday...the perfect time to make bread. I save my yeast works for the weekend because my house is generally much colder than ideal and it takes a lot longer for the dough to rise than the recipes suggest.

I wasn't sure how much dough I would need, so I went to the King Arthur Flour website for some help. They had a recipe for regular white flour, but also one using 100% white whole wheat flour. Despite knowing the caveats of whole wheat (it can be dense and more difficult to work with), I wanted a whole wheat bread like I would normally buy. I found the recipe here: http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/100-whole-wheat-pain-de-mie-recipe.

This was the first time I made dough in my new stand mixer and let me tell you: it is wonderful!!!! No worrying about the stand mixer overheating or watching it thump along the counter tettering dangerously close to the edge. It was delightfully smooth running and the dough looked just right.

I let the dough rise for a bit and when I came back, it had already risen quite a bit. I was so excited! I formed the dough into a log and put it in my cook sprayed pan de mie pan. I tried to flatten out the top the best I could. I came back 30 minutes later and it was rising smoothly, but pulling away from the sides more than I wanted. I tried to push it back into place a bit better, but I think that was the fatal flaw. The bread didn't rise much more after that.

So I put the lid on and baked it like the recipe suggested. It didn't spring up to the top of the pan, but it still turned out pretty good. And the loaf is huge! I need to freeze half of it tonight because there is no way I will be able to get through the whole thing. But thats a good thing, it means I won't have to make a new loaf of bread every single week.

Now with one success under my belt I am excited to test out the pan further in the future. I have been working hard to limit processed foods from my diet and making my own bread is another step in the right direction!!!