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I made this recipe and the bread came out so beautiful and delicious. Thank you @Benito for contributing this recipe and so many more to the bread baking community.
Not only was it immediately soft and delicious, but on day 8 after baking the section I had remaining was still relatively soft and very tasty (just sitting on the cutting board loosely wrapped in a grocery produce plastic bag).
Notes
I used an 80:20 mix of home-milled yecora rojo and white sonora wheats. I picked these wheats at this ratio for the strength and flavor I thought they’d combine to have, and liked the results.
I also used light olive oil instead of butter. That was a kinda bold substitution but it worked out well 
I don’t have a small Pullman pan, so in the photos below you can see the rise I got in a medium USA pan (9x5x2.75).
Also, my levain stalled at a little more than double in size, but it still worked quite well.
Photos
Yecora Rojo and White Sonora
I milled them together and used them in the levain too
What a beautiful bake @Fermentada!! I love that you blended grains for this, it must have added extra complexity to the flavour. I’m impressed how brave you were to use olive oil instead of butter, that is a great substitution. I hope to work on a vegan version of this recipe in the future and your olive oil substitution gives me confidence that it will work just fine.
I hope other give this bread a try, it really is simple and if you don’t want to do the Hokkaido mountains shaping, then you could easily shape as a regular loaf as I did in the post I called a shokupan here.
Great job @Benito and @Fermentada. I’ve been meaning to try this, probably with the black sesame option, but haven’t gotten to it yet (I’ve been working Gallego breads and I’ve promised to try out some 18% protein wheat for a farmer friend. And then there’s the pain d’épices and the pumpernickel from Teffri-Chambelland’s book. And in between I’ve got beer and cheese to make and garden projects. 
).
Mark I totally understand having a long list of things you want to bake and not enough time to do so. If you do try this eventually, the black sesame with honey is a nice combination to try.
Benny
Wow Benny!!! What a beautiful recipe……I’m anxious to give it a try and “copy”” your result!
Hey Cheryl nice to hear from you. I hope you do try this recipe, I really love both the flavour and texture of this bread. It is the first 100% whole wheat recipe that I’ve made that I truly loved and now has me hooked on baking all whole grain. Please post your bake when you get to baking it.
Beautiful loaf @Benito! I am intrigued by that sweet levain. It looks very happy and lively in your photos! Also, I love the tangzhong method! It is so cool to see the flour slurry change state when the starches start gelling. My mouth is watering looking at this bread! Great job!
Thank you very much Dan. Since using the stiff sweet levain for this style of bread I have been testing its uses in other breads including sourdough baguettes. It’s amazing what adding some sugar can do to the acid profile of the resulting bread.
Does the sugar increase or decrease acidity? I would guess that it would rev up the yeast activity, but would the acid-producing bacteria activity also increase or would the yeast just out-compete the bacteria for food?
If the sugar concentration is enough, it creates osmotic pressure that dehydrates the microbes both the yeast and LAB. However, the LAB are more sensitive to this effect so the levain will have less LAB and less acidity. I’ve posted the results of tests that I ran on levains comparing the same hydration but with or without the sugar. I’ve also compared the same recipes make with stiff sweet levain vs stiff levains and in every test bake the stiff sweet levains had higher pH than their comparative stiff levains and the bread made with the stiff sweet levains had higher pH than their non sweet counterparts.
So stiff sweet levains produce less acid via dehydrating effects on the LAB resulting in fewer LAB produced which then translates into bread with less acidity.
Makes sense! Thanks Benny!
The recipe for this dough is so versatile. Just to illustrate this I made a 50% WW version today as Lap Cheong filled buns, three shaped like black eye Susans.
So delicious and a sturdy bread for sandwiches. I made this bread last week and now regretting that I gave half a loaf to a friend. She loved it as much as I did. My Sweet Levain did not rise much, but I decided to go ahead with the recipe. I had fed my starter that morning before I made the Levain, so maybe that was the problem. The dough was nice to work with and after watching the video, shaped the dough and put in pullman pan. It rose within 2 hours and was ready to bake. My bread was at 200 in 41 minutes. It came out of the pan beautifully and I let it cool for 2 hours before cutting. So nutty tasting and delicious. Next time I will try putting in the black sesame seeds. The dough gave my standing mixer a good workout. Thank you Benito for this recipe and your video that took all guess work out of making.
@LindaGoetz Linda I’m so glad that you made this and that you liked it. I do hope you try making variations of it, as I’ve said it is super versatile. I made a version spiced with currants and mixed peel as hot cross buns yesterday.
I’m glad the video was helpful as well.
Happy Baking
Benny
I converted this recipe to fully vegan and used it to make burger buns. They taste fabulous! Can’t wait to use it to make cinnamon rolls, raisin bread, etc.
That’s great Glenn, I’d love to know what you did to make this vegan? I’ve posted a vegan milk bread as well but I’m always interested in hearing what other bakers come up with.
Benny
I used Soy milk and vegan butter (from Trader Joe’s). For the 53g egg in the main recipe, I used 40g water plus 13g (1 TBSP) Egg Replacer (Bob’s Red Mill). I used a mix of Whole White Wheat and Whole Einkorn flour that I milled myself. I added in some flax seeds (20g). I topped with sesame seeds. Instead of the egg/milk wash, I just spray misted with water a few times. I baked at 350F for 30 minutes, with a water pan in the bottom of the oven for steam.
I think I’ll use this base recipe to make Babka next.
Soy milk is my favourite non dairy milk for sure. I’ve never seen the egg replacer before and I’ll have to have a look into that. You should post your bread and details on how you made it, I’m sure others would be interested in baking it Glenn.
Benny
