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My daughter’s birthday is this week and as she loves hearty, artisan breads, I decided to bake Jeffrey Hamelman’s sourdough seed bread instead of a cake.  

I used King Arthur bread flour and Arrowhead Organic rye.  The seeds were purchased from an organic food coop.  The recipe was tweaked a bit.

Day one (of three): Assemble the liquid levain, soak the flax seeds, and toast the sunflower and sesame seeds:  

Liquid levain: 
4.8 oz. bread flour
6 oz. water
1 oz. mature culture

The recipe calls for a liquid culture.  I opted to try one ounce of my stiff sourdough culture straight from the refrigerator [it had been refreshed the day before] as an experiment.

Mix the levain and allow it to stand (covered, at 70F) for 12 to 16 hours.  The photo shows my levain about two hours after it had been mixed.

Flax seed soaker:   
2.2 oz. flax seeds
6.7 oz. cold water

After you’ve mixed the levain, place 2.2 oz. flax seeds in a container and gently add  6.7 oz. cold water.  Cover and let stand for 12 to 16 hours.   As the flax seeds absorb the water, the mixture will appear gelatinous.

Toast the sunflower and sesame seeds:
3.8 oz. sunflower seeds (shelled)
1.9 oz sesame seeds

The sunflower seeds were toasted on a cookie sheet in a 325F oven for about 20 minutes (stirred occasionally) until browned.  The sesame seeds were browned in a cast iron pan over direct flame.  Stir constantly or they’ll pop out of the pan all over your stove top.

The toasted  seeds were mixed together (smelling oh, so heavenly), moved to a glass bowl, then covered and allowed to rest overnight so the nutty flavors could meld.  

Day two:  Mixing, fermentation, shape, and retard:
1 lb. 8.6 oz. bread flour
2.6 oz whole rye flour
11.3 oz. water.  
.7 oz salt (1 T plus ½ tsp)
All (8.9 oz) of the flax seed soaker
All (5.7 oz) of the toasted sunflower and sesame seeds
10.8 oz. liquid levain (all of the liquid levain except for 2T [1 oz]) (I added all 10.9 oz.)

The desired dough temperature is 76F (see note at the end of this text).

All of the ingredients were added to my KA spiral mixer.  Hamelman instructs to mix at first speed for three minutes, then at second speed for another three minutes.  I think Bread was written primarily for professional bakers and that those mixing instructions are for a heavy duty commercial mixer, so I don’t follow them.

I used the first speed only long enough to make sure the levain, water, salt, flour, and seeds were well mixed, then let the dough autolyse for 20 minutes.  After the autolyse, the dough was moved to my counter top where I stretched and folded until it felt supple.

Bulk fermentation is 2.5 hours.  The dough next was placed in a bowl for the bulk fermentation.  I folded it twice at 50-minute intervals.

I retarded the bread on a full sheet of parchment placed on a three-sided cookie sheet.  These three loaves were placed in a large food-grade plastic bag and moved to the refrigerator. The recipe calls for two large loaves, but I prefer three smaller loaves.

Final fermentation: The final fermentation can be up to 18 hours at 42F.

Day three: Bake and cool.

These loaves rose nicely during the final fermentation and even while unbaked, the perfume of the toasted seeds was quite wonderful.

The retarded breads had about an hour’s warm-up time while the oven was preheated to 460F.  They were scored and moved to the hot oven stone, then half a cup of hot water was dumped in the broiler pan under the stone.  Total bake time was 45 minutes.

The fragrance of the cooling bread was awesome.

I’ll give myself a “D” for scoring, but at least it’s a small improvement.

I waited 24 hours before slicing the bread, to allow the flavors to combine and mature.  The mix of the sunflower, flax, and sesame seeds, combined with the caramelized crust, provides a burst of flavor that borders on smokiness.  I loved the taste, fragrance, and texture of this bread.

A different take on crumb:  The kids and grandkids claim that too many holes means there’s too little bread, so they call it diet bread.  This should make them all happy.

If you enjoy an aromatic hearty bread, I’d encourage you to try Hamelman’s SD seed bread.  It's delicious toasted for breakfast, or with a bit of unsalted butter with a salad.  Or even plain!

Now, about desired dough temperature.  If you have Hamelman’s Bread, you’ll have read pages 382-385.  If you’re not familiar with the term, it is a formula used to determine the correct temperature of the water to be added to your flour and other ingredients.  It makes a difference in the quality of your bread.

Rather than reinventing the wheel, I direct you to WildYeast's blog where she so masterfully covers the subject and even provides a free downloadable calculator.  (Thank you, Susan!).

Many people wanted to get details how to make the bread with translucent alveoli walls which I have published in the community bake 50% wholewheat thread. So I promised to make notes about the process. However, this bread was not made with sourdough starter but rather with tomato and basil yeast water.

For those who don't like to read too much here are the major differences to what most of people usually do:

1.) Longer autolyse (this time 4 hours) at room temperature

2.) Extended bulk fermentation in the fridge for 18 hours

3.) Bread was shaped as ciabatta.

4.) There was almost no final proofing - just time needed to warm up the oven

5.) Staring baking temperature was 500 dF (260 dC).

This are by my opinion the differences which are not common in most recipes or traditional procedures.

The reason for 4 hour long autolyse is giving more extensibility to the dough caused by enzymatic activity of protease. Second reason is to hydrate well the bran particles so they will have less sharp edges and will not cut the gluten network so much.

I made this bread only from 300g of flour mixture with 50% of whole-grain wheat flour and 50% of type 500 white bread flour with unknown protein content but estimated to be between 11 and 12%. Definitely with significantly smaller protein content than American or Canadian flours.   The plan was to shape it as ciabatta.

The process is as follows:

1.) Two stage levain build: first stage with 50g of white flour T500 and 50g of yeast water. When doubled add 50g of whole-grain wheat flour and 50g of water (better if you use here yeast water again). The levain build will take about 5-8 hours.

2.) Mix whole-grain wheat flour and white wheat flour type 500 with 70% of water (70% of weight of flour for the main dough) and let it rest for 4 hours at room temperature.

3.) Mix levain and alutolysed flour with hand and develop gluten by using scoop & stretch method (rhubaud method of mixing). This usually takes about 2-4 minutes and as result you get a cohesive dough. Let the dough rest for about 20-30 minutes.

4.) Add 2% of salt and additional 5% of water (if necessary) in my case this was 15g. Incorporate the salt and water into the dough and repeat gluten development with scoop & stretch method.

5.) During the bulk fermentation make 6 stretch & folds at 30 minutes interval.

6.) When the signs of the dough are clearly visible: dough is well aerated, billowy, has risen for about 40-50%, the traces of previous folding are clearly visible at next folding then transfer the dough into rectangular container which is well oiled with olive oil and put it in the fridge for at least 12 to 24 hours. See the attached video.

7.) When the dough has risen nicely and one can see a lot of alveoli - after at least 12 hours, tip the dough out of the container and shape it as ciabattas. See the attached video.

8.) As this dough contains 50% of whole-grain flour it does not need a lot of final proofing. I just preheated the oven to 500 dF (260 dC) and baked the ciabatta in iron-cast skillet. No scoring needed! The temperature should be reduced to 430 dF (220 dC) after 8 minutes, uncover after 15 minutes of baking (from the start)  and continue baking at  410 dF (210 dC) for 10 minutes more. Overall baking time for ciabatta is about 25-30 minutes.

In the picture above one can easily spot the bran particles in the translucent alveoli walls.

I hope that the instructions are clear enough that you will be able to make such bread. Happy baking!

Joze

Over my last two days off I made this really big Oatmeal Miche. Its subtle and earthy and maybe a little too big but it will last all week until I have time to make another so I'm pleased.

Here's how I made it

Levain build one 

• 20g rye chef
• 50g fresh ground hard red
• 20g water

Levain build two

• 25g firm levain
• 100g fresh ground hard red
•  50g water

Final Dough

• 1100g Bread Flour (69%)
• 320g Hard White (20%)
• 70g Hard Red (4%)
• 10g Rye (1ish%)
• 150g Levain (6.6%hard red 3.3%water)
• 1150g water (72%) (hold 100g)
• 400g Cooked oatmeal (25%)
• 235g Toasted Hazelnuts (15%)
• 32g Salt (2%)

First I mixed all the flours and let the dough autolyse  at room temp holding 100 grams of water for later.

Eight hours later I dissolved the levain in the leftover water and incorporated it into the dough. Fifteen minutes later added the salt and have the dough a few slap and folds. followed by a ten minute rest and a set of stretch and folds followed by a 20 minute rest.

During that 20 minutes I roasted and cracked the hazelnuts and cooked the oatmeal.

I incorporated the nuts and oatmeal and for the next hour and forty minutes I have the dough 4 sets of semi evenly spaced out stretch and folds. then I left it alone for around six hours. Then I shaped it and put it right in the fridge to proof

21 hours later I removed it from the fridge and put it right in a 500degree oven. 5 minutes later I reduced the heat to 450 and continued baking for another 55 or so minutes. once the the loaf was done I turned the oven off and left it in with the door cracked for an additional ten minutes.