Preparing To Teach Someone How to Bake a Whole Wheat Yeast Bread

I'm going to be teaching a friend how to bake bread. She has never baked bread or had any experience with a bread-like dough. Since it'll be a one-day thing, it won't use sourdough as I'm used to doing since I want her to learn from start to finish and take the loaf home. All yeast recipes I see online are for enriched whole wheat bread. I have no experience baking a whole grain bread with yeast, but here's what I typically do with sourdough (I do not include starter ingredients in my 100%): hydration: 80-83% salt: 2% starter: 15-20%

For a dough with 80% home-milled whole wheat flour (of the 80%, I might use a small percentage of whole grain spelt and rye, maybe 8% each) and 20% bread flour, I have the following questions:

is 80% a good hydration level? (I want a dough that will be easy to work with)
should I do an autolyse?
how do I determine the percentage of dry active or instant yeast (I have both)?
do I ferment and proof until double the size (I do much less for sourdough)?
why do some recipes say to "punch down" the dough after the first rise? This is not typically done with sourdough. Thank you.

bread learning

Best Answer

Your plans sound pretty good to me. I'd treat yeasted breads almost exactly the same as sourdough. The only real difference is the proofing time. The only negative I would say is that whole grain breads really do need a long fermentation to help improve their flavour, and I find if you don't do that, then the bread tends to taste a bit like a field of wheat, and a bit grassy. You can perhaps add a teaspoon of malt extract to dissolve in the water to help improve the flavour. Otherwise it might be better to go with a predominantly white flour mix, and only use a small amount of whole grain flour, maybe like 30%.

It is possible to do a long ferment with yeast, you just start with much less yeast - like only pinch, and leave overnight, but obviously you don't have time for that. Other possibilities are to use some of the flour to make a pre-ferment such as a poolish/biga, and use this as you would use a sourdough starter. But again, these are usually done overnight - of course you could prepare it in advance.

Anyway, to address your points . . .

Yes, sounds like a good idea. 80% hydration will be easier to handle
Yes, do an autolyse. It will help hydrate the flour, just as it does with sourdough.
Use 1% to 1.5% active/instant dry yeast. Makes no difference which kind of dried yeast you use. If you use active yeast, add it to warm water to dissolve and let it activate for around 10 minutes before adding to the flour. Instant yeast can be added directly into the flour.
Whole grain doughs don't rise as much as white flour. I wouldn't expect it to double in size, so again just as you would normally with sourdough. It will likely be fully risen within 1 to 2 hours, depending on how warm your room is and how much yeast you added.
Usually punching down is for very gassy/bubbly doughs. You likely won't need to do that with a whole grain dough. It doesn't rise as much, and you probably want to retain as much gas as possible - same as with a sourdough.