Spencer Berkebile

Feb 15, 2022

Seeded Whole Wheat Loaf

A while back my wife decided to begin a new diet that required her to take a closer look at her consumption and in doing so she recognized that she was lacking in quite a few different areas - one being her breakfast and the types of carbs she was eating. Normally my bread making ventures are more gluttonous than anything else, opting for cheesy Jalapeño bread or focaccia. In response I decided to try making her a loaf (easier to slice and weigh) that is whole wheat with a ton of seeds so she can make sure she's hitting all the things she needed to hit.

The recipe is similar to my normal sourdough recipe, and I'll break it all down real quick: soak get levain going, begin autolyse and soak some seeds, combine levain and autolyse, and then it's full-on bread making time. Let's take a look at all the ingredients we will need, and then I'll break down everything into steps.

Seed Soak

-40g sunflower seeds

-40g hemp seeds

-25g pumpkin seeds

-10g fennel

-135g boiled water

Levain

-40g King Arthur white whole wheat flour

-40g water

-20g starter

Autolyse

-450g King Arthur bread flour

-50g King Arthur white whole wheat flour

-350g water

-10g salt

Instructions

1. Combine all ingredients for levain and place into a medium sized bowl and cover, then place either in proofer at 80°F or in turned off oven with the light on and allow to rest for 3 hours.

2. With one hour left on levain rest time, begin boiling some water and combine all ingredients of the autolyse (excluding the salt). Once the ingredients are all in a bowl, mix well until thoroughly combined, cover, and allow to rest alongside the levain wherever it is being kept.

3. Place all seeds into a small bowl and pour the now boiled water over top and allow to rest until used in a few hours.

4. Once the rest for the levain is up, combine levain into the autolyse and combine thoroughly using either slap and folds or the rubaud method of kneading. The goal here is simply to combine, not make perfect - once good and combined we are going to let the dough rest covered for 30 minutes. Now we will be working about ever 30 - 60 minutes for a brief stint, so be nearby to your dough.

5. Add the salt that was withheld from the autolyse in now, perform a set of stretch and folds and then cover and allow to rest for 30 minutes.

6. Drain the seed soak and place onto paper towels to dry, if possible try to pat out as much liquid as possible since we don't want to make our dough too loose. Perform a slower set of stretch and folds where each stretch you sprinkle a portion of the seed soak on. Since a set of stretch and folds is 4 "stretches", you'll want to try to portion out 5 portions of seeds.

-Before doing any stretch and folds, place 1/5 of seed mixture onto dough, then perform first stretch and fold. Order should be: seeds -> stretch and fold -> seeds -> stretch and fold -> seeds -> stretch and fold -> seeds -> stretch and fold. Any leftover seeds can go on top at the end. Allow to rest 30 minutes covered in the spot you've been resting dough previously.

7. We are going to perform our last set of stretch and folds here, and then allowing the dough to rest for one full hour covered, and placed into our resting place.

8. Now that the dough has rested for a full hour, we are going to begin doing coil folds every hour. After the first set of coil folds, cover and rest for 1 hour. We will perform this step two more times, for a total of 3 coil folds over 3 hours.

9. It has now been 3 hours and we've performed our third coil fold, it's time to begin getting the dough together for it's final rest in the refrigerator! First we want to lightly flour a workspace, then gently roll the dough onto it. From here we need to as gently, but firmly, roll the dough into a ball - this is much easier described in video format and to see it in action, follow this link to a handy YouTube video: https://youtu.be/h7eqwYLv2tI.

10. Now we will prep our banneton with rice flour, or a large bowl lined with a cloth and dusted generously with rice flour, and then delicately place our dough into said container. Cover the container, place it in the refrigerator and allow to rest for at least 12 hours. See you tomorrow!

11. Good morning! Now that the dough has had it's overnight cold proof, we can begin getting the oven ready by preheating the oven to 475°F for one hour with a large casserole dish of some sort in the bottom shelf, we will use this to help create steam.

12. Normally I'd use a cast iron dutch oven, but since this is a sandwich loaf I will simply be using a regular bread tin. Once the oven is preheated and an hour has passed we will drop the temp to 450°F, boil some water, and prep the tin by spraying some nonstick oil, or applying some yourself with your hands, to coat the sides and help prevent any sticking. Gently roll the dough into the tin and then once the water is boiled stick the bread tin with the dough in it on the middle shelf of the oven, and pour the boiling water into the dish at the bottom. We need that water to help create steam so the bread will rise adequately in the oven.

13. The baking time is an approximation, but I aim for around 45 minutes to get a good bake. You should be watching the bread at the 35 minute mark to see if it is browning adequately, and if necessary check the temperature using either a thermometer or by pulling the bread out and tapping on the bottom of the loaf. It should sound hollow if it is cooked through.

14. Once the bread is done, allow to rest for at least 1 hour, but preferably more. I will usually wait to cut into the loaf of bread either that afternoon/evening or even the following day!