wholemeal via mr bertinent's technique

in a previous blog, i mentioned about using richard bertinent's technique to "stretch and fold" the very wet dough rather than (trying to) knead it. i tried his recipe using a biga and made a ciabatta out of white flour. the crust was really good, as mr bertinent said it would. the bread was full of holes inside. there's a lot to like about this bread except that... it's made out of white flour!

so i redid this bread but this time with wholemeal. actualy the biga portion is wholemeal while the rest is white flour.

i made a slash on top but as it baked, it rosed so much the slash "made its way" to the left instead. that's why you see the "crack" there.

as you could see, there's lots of volume! this is from just 750gm of flour.

previously when i tried his cibatta, i made a mess out of all the wet dough. well mr bertinent did mention that if your environment is hot and humid, you should use less 20gm of water. hey! hot and humid, that's malaysia!

so i retried this method but with 20gm less water. it could be because of wholemeal or just less water as this time, the dough came together quite well. i was able to get a good handle on it and "worked" the dough via stretch-fold, stretch-fold, stretch-fold...

and the crust... awesome! smells good and tastes even better!

has less holes than using white flour but then this isn't surprising as there's about 40% wholemeal flour here.

can't wait to try with 70% wholemeal flour this weekend!