Brown Bread Experiment

I decided to experiment with making a sweet whole wheat bread.  I really like the brown bread that they serve at The Cheesecake Factory, and I wanted to make something similar.  I added some instant coffee powder to give it a darker color and brown sugar to add sweetness.

Ingredients

100g whole wheat flour

100mL milk (heated)

20g brown sugar

2g instant coffee

2.5g instant yeast

2g salt

I mixed all ingredients except for the salt and autolysed for 30 minutes.  After adding the salt, I let the dough rise for 1 hour before shaping into a demi-baguette.  Even at 100% hydration, this dough felt more like 75% hydration with white flour.  I guess the whole wheat really soaks up the liquid.

After a 30 minute rise, I scored the loaf.

I topped the loaf with some rolled oats (about 1 TBSP) that I had soaked in a little bit of milk.

I baked for 20 minutes at 400F.

Here's a crumb shot.  The bread was soft and sweet.  The color is not as dark as I had hoped, but I will continue to experiment with this.  I didn't get much oven spring.  I'm going to play around with hydration, longer rise time, bake temperature, and steam.