#31 Whole Wheat Mash Bread and #33 Multigrain Mash Bread

Frankly, this was another set of loaves that I had my doubts about. It should be clear that I'm not really a whole grain kind of guy. I'm doing this challenge to broaden my horizons and see what I might like and what I don't like. And occasionally, there are a few surprises along the way. But these loaves didn't look that promising to me.

Creating the mash for these breads is an involved processes so I decided to make both loaves at once. To create the mash you take flour or grains, add hot water, and then bake it in a low oven (150 degrees) for one to three hours. If your oven won't go that low, Reinhart suggests cycling the oven on and off every 10 minutes. Fortunately, my oven did go that low although I needed to use an oven thermometer and play with the settings. The dial was not particularly accurate in this range. But that a lot better than cycling the oven every 10 minutes.

For my loaves, I cooked the mashes about two hours. After that time, they turned into gelatinous gruels that looked even less promising than the original recipes sounded. I created the soakers and let both sets sit out over night. Forming and baking the loaves was straight forward and uneventful. As can be seen, I elected to use loaf pans rather than make freestanding loaves.

And the results? These were two excellent loaves, if somewhat nondescript. (I brushed both with butter and that helped their appearance somewhat.) But the flavor was excellent. Really! Typically, my tastes run to multigrain over whole wheat, but in this case I preferred the whole wheat loaf. Live and learn.