To me, baking bread is fun, primal...therapy, childlike excitement, nurturing, messing and getting hands dirty, nostalgia, all of that and more wrapped up in forms of buns and loaves.
As a self proclaimed health advocate and believer of "home food", I think this bread will be a great addition to your arsenal. It's slightly difficult/ sticky to work with. More like clay than a well rounded dough. Also, the finished bread is slightly more brittle than a whole wheat or white bread.
The base recipe is from my Whole Wheat Bread recipe with some deviations as my whole wheat bread recipe is tried and tested and fool proof and I like to use that as my boiler plate recipe for loaf breads.
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Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup ragi flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoon molasses/ treacle
1/3 cup (80 ml) vegetable oil (I like to use half ghee and half oil)
1/2 cup (120 ml) whole milk
1 cup (240 ml) water (room or warm temperature)
**Pro Tip: If you cannot get strong bread flour, make your own using All Purpose Flour (APF) and vital wheat Gluten (G). 4 gms of G to every 100 gms of APF.
Roast the ragi flour for 5-7 minutes until aromatic. (what I do is I've a large aluminium bowl and roast the flour in it then dunk the rest of the ingredients in when it's slightly cooled down)
In a bowl, mix all ingredients together along with the roasted ragi flour with a wooden spatula till incorporated then turn it over on a well floured counter.
Put your timer on for 10 minutes and start kneading. Please note that this dough will get tacky and will want to stick to your hands and the counter. Use the dusting flour (I use whole wheat) generously and keep kneading.
Don't let the sticky dough overwhelm you, because I promise it all comes together later.
Stretch the dough as much as you can, we need to make use of every bit of gluten for a fluffy bread since ragi has none. (you can see below how bad it gets)
By the end of the 10 minutes mark, you're dough will start behaving and comes to being a shiny ball.
Transfer to the same bowl you mixed everything in and lightly coat and roll in oil, let it hatch for 50 minutes to an hour under cling film and kitchen towel.
Take off the bowl, deflate and roll into a loaf tucking the edges in and suturing the open ends. Keep all the sutures, edges at the bottom.
Drop into a greased loaf pan (I use a 9 inch pan) and let it hatch again for 40 minutes or so until its 1 inch above the pan.
While there's still 20 minutes left on your timer, start the oven and put it to preheat at 180 C.
Prepare egg white wash (*tip: don't use egg yolks for long bakes, unless you're going for too brown a crust)
Brush the top gently with the egg wash and sprinkle rolled oats or you can completely skip this step, it's optional.
Bake for 50 minutes at 180 C and cover with a foil at 25 minutes mark.
Take off the oven and cool in pan for 10 minutes.
Run a knife along the edges and released the bread, let it rest on a wire rack until completely cool (ideally)
Slice and store wrapped in clean kitchen towels in a large Ziploc bag. Stays well up to 7-10 days.
Enjoy!!!
Ragi (finger millet) Whole Wheat Bread
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup ragi flour
1 cup strong bread flour
1 3/4 teaspoon instant dry yeast
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons molasses/ treacle
1/3 cup (80 ml) vegetable oil
1/2 cup (120 ml) whole milk
1 cup (240 ml) water (room or warm temperature)
For brushing *optional
Roast the ragi flour on low heat for 5-7 minutes until aromatic.
In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients.
Knead by hand for at least 10 - 12 minutes.
Let hatch covered with cloth over a cling wrap for 1 hour.
Flatten the dough, roll it, suture the edges and place the dough in a bread pan.
Let it grow a second time for 40 -45 minutes or until an inch above pan.
Preheat oven for at 180 C for 20 minutes. (do this while bread is rising in pan)
Brush top of bread with egg white and sprinkle rolled oats.
Bake for 50 minutes at 180 ° C (350 ° F) (cover the top with aluminium foil half way).
Cool, slice and store.
Varieties of bread 🥖
ReplyDeleteOf course! There's no marriage here B-)
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