Table of Contents
Tools
Required
- Scale
- Mixing bowls (x2)
- Pizza Stone OR Dutch Oven (One of these is required, recommend dutch oven)
- Proofing bowl (Recommend a Banneton Basket for a nice crust)
- Oven mitt
- Plastic wrap
Optional
- Lame – get some beautiful scoring, alternatively use a sharp knife
- Tea towels – keep your dough covered when it's out and about
- Bowl scraper – helpful for picking up the shaped dough and scraping the sides of bowls
- Apron – helpful for staying stylish and clean
Ingredients
Required
- 310 grams, Bread Flour – I use King Arthur’s Unbleached Bread Flour.
- 80 grams, Whole Wheat Flour – I use King Arthur’s White Whole Wheat Flour
- Multiple dashes of, All-Purpose Flour – This is for dusting surfaces, I use TJ’s AP Flour
- 8 grams, Salt – I use Diamond Crystal’s Kosher Salt. Make sure it is NOT iodized
- 290 grams, Water for Dough – I use the City of Stamford’s Municipal Water, unfiltered.
- 60 grams, Active Starter, like super bubbly.
- 13 grams, Sesame Seeds.
- 13 grams, Chia Seeds.
- 13 grams, Poppy Seeds.
- 45 grams, Water to soak seeds.
Note: You can use other flour, flours can be drier or wetter depending on multiple factors, including humidity, protein content, etc. Over time you will be able to tell how much water you need to hydrate your flours.
Instructions
Day 1: 5-6 hours
There are several steps that span about 6 hours, some steps you’ll need to come back to the dough every 30-45 minutes. After 6 hours of actively working with the dough, it’ll go into the fridge overnight.
Prepping your seeds
If you've looked at my other recipe for sourdough, this is the key difference between the two adding seeds to the dough. This adds great nutty flavors as well as lots of fiber, calcium, copper, and omega-3 fatty acids. I've also gotten rid of the lamination step as it was giving me a closed crumb. I added some more stretch and folds instead.
- 13 grams, Sesame Seeds.
- 13 grams, Chia Seeds.
- 13 grams, Poppy Seeds.
- 45 grams, Water.
Toast the sesame seeds in a dry skillet on low heat until they're golden brown, about 3-4 minutes.
Take all the seeds and soak them in the water. Give this a stir every time you come to fold the dough. We need to hydrate the seeds now else they will soak up the water in the dough and ruin our bread! We will add the seeds to the dough before our second stretch and fold.
Mixing all the ingredients for the dough
- 310g King Arthur Bread Flour
- 80g King Arthur White Whole Wheat Flour
- 290g lukewarm water
Mix this all together till nothing is dry.
Let the dough rest for 20 to 60 minutes, this is called autolyse. This will help the gluten in the dough to start forming, this gives your dough strength. This will also allow the flour to hydrate. Many times, my autolyse time depends on what else is happening in my life.
- 60g active starter
After mixing in the starter let the dough rest for 20 minutes. We let the dough rest for some time just to give the starter some time to start breaking down the flour, next we’ll add salt which inhibits starter growth. At the end of the rest, prepare a large mixing bowl by oiling the sides with ~2tsp olive oil or any neutral oil. We will refer to this large bowl as the bulk fermentation bowl.
- 8g kosher salt (I used Pink Himalayian Salt once when I ran out of Kosher and it was fine)
Sprinkle the salt over the dough, dip your hands in some water, mix it all together. We moisten our hands to help the salt dissolve and combine with the dough. Mix until you don’t feel the salt. If your hands burn at this stage its probably because your have some abrasions in your skin that is irritated by the salt/water, don’t worry about it, power through, develop grit, you’ll need it.
This is an ideal time to observe your flour performance, as you may need to make adjustments with the addition of water. If the dough feels resistant to mixing and difficult to work inside the bowl, add more water in 10 to 15 gram increments, thoroughly mixing it in with the salt until the dough is no longer slick on the surface. The dough should feel supple and somewhat sticky at this point.
Proof the Dough
During the proofing stages we will do a couple of workouts to give the dough strength and extensibility. First slap and fold, then enter bulk fermentation, then laminate, and then stretch and folds, and then shape the dough, then cold proof.
Slap and Fold
We will be pouring the dough out onto a VERY lightly floured counter and then pick up the dough with your hands, give it a little fling to stretch it out and fold onto itself and then slap it back down on the counter. We will do this for a whole 5 minutes, it’s a workout. If you need to take a break you can do that, I won’t judge. Give it a good “whack-a-tau”. You should feel the dough becoming less and less shaggy and more collected as you do this process. If bits of the dough get stuck on your counter you can try to slap the dough down on it so it reattaches or you can scrap it off and just stick it back on the dough.
Bulk Fermentation
Now that you’ve slapped and folded your dough you can place it in your bulk fermentation bowl. Good thing we already prepped that so your dough doesn’t get stuck on your counter. Now we enter the bulk fermentation stage, this is when most of the yeast growth and gas development will happen. At every point in this stage we will be effecting the “crumb” of the loaf. If we degas the dough then the crumb will be “closed”, if we are careful then we will have a beautiful open crumb.
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and wait 30 minutes
Stretch and Fold - And Adding Seeds
Take off the plastic wrap, then oil your hands with a neutral oil, like olive oil, to prevent the dough from sticking. Gently slide your fingers of both hands under the dough. Release the dough from the sides of the bowl and gently stretch it up and fold it to the center. Do this for all four sides. Place the wrap back on. We do this 4-6 more times and wait 30 minutes in between each fold.
On the second stretch and fold, add the seeds to the top of the dough and stretch and fold like normal. Try to spread the seeds out when you put them on top of the dough. By the last stretch and fold the seeds will be distributed.
Be especially careful toward the end of bulk fermentation not to aggressively handle or deflate the dough. You should notice it progress from a ‘shaggy mass’ at the beginning of the mix to exhibiting a more cohesive and smooth character by the end of bulk fermentation.
Shaping the Dough
Pre-Shape
Now that we’ve stretched and folded the dough a bunch of times, after the last time we fold we wait another 45 minutes. Now we are ready to shape the dough. This is done in two stages: pre-shape with a short resting period, followed by a tighter final shaping.
Using a bowl scraper, swiftly remove the dough from the bowl and place on a lightly floured surface.
*Note: If you want to split the dough into multiple loaves do that now by slicing through the dough with a bench scraper.
Now, using your hands, bring the top of the dough to the center, followed by the bottom, and two sides. Tuck the resulting four corners to the middle as well, resulting in a slightly rounded form. Using your bench scraper, release the dough from the surface and flip it over seam side down. Cover with a towel and allow to rest for 10 to 30 minutes.
During this time prepare your proofing baskets or bowls. Line your basked with a linen/cheese cloth and rub flour onto it. The flour is very hydrated and will soak up the flour and stick unless you but enough. Rub in the flour so there isn’t clumps of raw flour on the final loaf.
Final Shape
To final shape, use the bench scraper to flip the dough over onto a lightly floured surface, seam side up. Pull out the top and bottom of the dough an inch or so. Starting from the top, tuck the right side to the center, holding it in place while you bring the left side to the center overlapping with the first. Repeat this side-to-side stitching until you reach the bottom of the dough. Roll the dough from bottom to top until the seam is facing down, tucking as you go to create tension. Flour the top of the loaf generously.
Cold Proof
Use your bench scraper to push it perpendicular to the seam to help seal it in, pick up the dough and flip it over, seam side up. Cradle it into your proofing basket before dusting it with flour and covering with a cloth or towel. Cover with plastic and place in the refrigerator for the final cold proof for at least 8 hours and up to 24 before baking. A long proofing stage allows the acid producing bacteria in the starter to create a more developed tangy flavor and more digestible loaf than you would get if the bread just proofed for a few hours at room temperature.
Day 2: (2 hours active, 2 hours cooling)
Today we can bake!
Preheat your oven to 480F. Take some parchment paper and cut it out so it fits in your dutch oven or on top of your pizza stone. This will prevent the bottom of your loaf from burning. Sometimes I use up to three sheets. Set the parchment paper aside.
Once your oven is preheated place your stone or dutch oven inside on the middle or less than middle rack. If you are using a stone, also preheat a baking sheet on the lower rack. Preheat the stone/dutch oven for 30 minutes, this will help us create a nice crust.
20 minutes into the preheat, dust some flour on your pre-cut parchment paper and flip your loaf out onto it, seam side down.
Score the top of the loaf with a razor blade (or lame, if you have one) about 1/4-inch deep to allow the loaf to fully expand in while baking. If you do not score the bread the rapid expansion of gases in the heat of the oven will break through the weakest spots of the crust, leaving you with an uneven and not pretty crust.
You may add additional decorative scores that aren’t as deep. Act quickly as the loaf will continue to spread before going into the oven.
Take your stone/dutch oven out of the oven. Now we will split the steps up depending on if you are using a stone or dutch oven. In both cases we want to trap steam to create a nice crust.
Pizza Stone Method
Place the dough on the pizza stone with parchment paper. Cover the dough and stone with a domed baking pan, turn the pan so air can come up into the pan. Now add water to the baking sheet we preheated to create steam that will be trapped in the pan. Place pizza stone back into oven.
Bake with the lid on for 20 minutes. Remove the lid and lower the oven temperature 10 to 15°F. Bake for another 15 to 20 minutes until the crust is a deep, rusty brown or darker if desired. Cool completely on a wire rack before slicing.
Dutch Oven Method
Carefully lower the dough and parchment paper into the preheated Dutch oven, position the lid, and return it to the oven. Bake with the lid on for 20 minutes. Remove the lid and lower the oven temperature 10 to 15°F. Bake for another 15 to 20 minutes until the crust is a deep, rusty brown or darker if desired. Cool completely on a wire rack before slicing.
Cooling and Slicing
Completely cooling a loaf takes about 2 hours. If you slice the bread before that the steam trapped inside the loaf will cause the crumb to close up. If you place your sliced bread in a zip lock bag make sure steam doesn’t get trapped in the bag.
SCIENCE: A long slow proofing may give the beneficial culture in a sourdough culture more time to pre-digest the flour. In sourdough, the bacteria produce an enzyme called phytase, which ‘pre-digests’ the phytic acid during the cold proof. This helps neutralize the effects of the phytic acid and makes the bread easy for us to digest.
Phytic acid also acts to inhibit enzymes that are needed to break down the proteins and starch in our stomachs, and the lack of enzymes results in digestive difficulties.