No-Knead Multigrain Bread

With me, the baking attack always seems to strike in the cooler months and late in the evenings ! Its like a recipe for disaster with the yeast, and I have had some very disastrous bakes, but I don't give up very easily and I tried baking this bread at about 6 in the evening in winter! Thanks to the wonderful instant yeast and to this brilliant recipe by Suma of Cakes and More, I landed up with a really nice loaf of bread !



Big thanks to Sayantani too, who was sweet enough to let me know that she had tried this brand of instant yeast and that it worked really well, no proofing and it made the dough rise, in any weather condition ! I had my mom pick it up for me in Bangalore and send it across to Ahmedabad !
The process of baking bread takes a minimum of 3-4 hours, but this was really fast. Start to finish in less than 2 hours, which I think is great by bread baking standards !



I had picked up this multigrain flour by Pilsbury, which contains whole wheat, soy, oats, maize, raagi (finger millet), chana dal(bengal gram) and barley. I use it to make my rotis at home, and was very keen to try making bread with this flour. The temperature here has dropped quite a bit now and I started the process at about 6 in the evening,so I was really nervous if it would rise at all, but it turned out really well. Suma says that this bread doesn't really rise too much and I did use a largish loaf pan, so it was a flat, short bread, but tasted very healthy !

To add to the health quotient, I also threw in some sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, flax seeds and sesame seeds into the dough

Warmed this the next morning and had it with some orange marmalade and a cup of hot tea - perfect breakfast for a cold morning

Suma's directions are very precise and I tried to stick to it as much as I could, but had a few changes. Check here for her recipe

Sending this to Yeastspotting, Susan's weekly event for yeast breads

Multigrain Bread

What you need -

1 cup lukewarm milk
1/4 cup fresh orange juice
2 tbsp oil (I used sunflower oil)
1 tbsp honey
2 tbsp maple syrup (Use 2 tbsp of honey instead)
2 tbsp mixed seeds (sunflower, pumpkin, flax and sesame)
2 tsp instant yeast (I used Gloripan)
1 tsp salt
3 cups multigrain flour
3-4 tbsp water (if required)

What you do with it -

I used a 9 x 5 loaf pan, but a slightly smaller one should work better
Line with pan with parchment paper and grease really well
In a deep bowl, mix together the honey, yeast, warm milk, orange juice and the oil
To this, add the flour and salt and mix well using a hand mixer for 3 minutes
Add the seeds and mix well once more
Add the water, a spoon at a time, to make this dough really sticky and wet
Transfer the dough to the greased pan. Grease you hands with some oil and then smooth the top of the dough
Cover with a greased cling film wrap. Allow the dough to rise to the rim of the pan
This took about 45 mins
Pre-heat the oven to 180 C and bake for 45 mins
Allow to cool completely and then slice
Again, as she mentions, this is not a very high rising bread and since my loaf pan was bigger than the prescribed size, it did turn out quite short and flat