Whole Wheat Sourdough Hearth Bread by MangoChutney

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Whole Wheat Sourdough Hearth Bread
Submitted by MangoChutney - ... on May 01, 2011 at 11:29 pm

DESCRIPTION
A whole wheat sourdough sandwich bread baked in a USA-Pans hearth loaf pan.

SUMMARY
Yield 1 3.5lb loaf Source Adapted from Jonathan Kandell's Desem Bread File under hearth bread, sourdough, Whole wheat

INGREDIENTS
For dough:

18 ounces whole wheat starter
16 ounces liquid
21 ounces whole wheat flour
2.5 tsp salt
1 tbls sugar
5 oz seeds

Pan:

USA-Pan 12" hearth bread pan
Grease the hearth bread pan lightly. I use coconut oil for this.

For steaming:

4 tbls liquid
aluminum foil to cover pan

INSTRUCTIONS
The starter should be fed and fermented overnight before the morning that you make the bread. I have made it with fed and refrigerated starter but the loaf is more dense and it takes much longer to cook through. Fermenting the starter for a full day before using it produces a similar crumb to overnight, but the total rise seems a bit less. I feed my starter 8 ounces of water and 10 ounces of whole wheat flour in preparation for this recipe.

Mix the liquid and the dry flour in a bowl. I use 8 ounces of kefir whey and 8 ounces of water, but it can be any liquid that you prefer. It seems to do better with no more than half being something other than water. Let the flour soak in the liquid for 30 minutes. This lets the flour absorb as much liquid as it wants without any interference (autolyse).

Add the salt, sugar, and starter. I use sucanat for the sugar. Knead with a dough hook for 5 minutes. I use a Breville stand mixer on lowest speed.

Let stand for 5 minutes to allow the dough to relax. Use the time to lightly oil a bowl for the rising.

Add the seeds. I use 4 ounces of flax seed and 1 ounce of sesame seeds. Knead for another 5 minutes with a dough hook.

Lift the stand mixer head and quickly swap the oiled bowl for the mixer bowl. The dough will fall off the dough hook directly into the bowl for rising. This saves the effort of working the dough out of the mixer bowl, to which it wants to cling.

Cover the bowl and let the dough rise for 4 hours. After each hour, for a total of 3 times, remove the dough from the bowl and press it flat on a surface. Stretch it gently in several directions, without tearing the gluten, and fold it together again.

After the fourth hour has elapsed, shape the dough into a log that fits neatly into the baking pan. Do the usual surface tension operations on the dough, including shaping the ends. Lift the dough gently and place it in the pan. Make any last minute adjustments to make it even in diameter over the length of the pan. Cover the pan and let the dough proof for 90 minutes.

When the 90 minutes has elapsed, begin preheating the oven to 450 degrees F. When the oven has preheated, which may be about 15 more minutes of proofing time, dabble the 4 tbls of liquid over the proofed dough. I use kefir whey for this. It will puddle around the edges of the loaf after the top has been dampened.

Cover the pan with the aluminum foil, securing it to the edges of the pan all the way around but leaving a balloon of foil over the top so that the oven spring is not blocked by the foil. This is to keep in the steam from the 4 tbls of liquid.

Bake at 450 degrees F for 25 minutes, then remove the foil and lower the oven temperature to 350 degrees F. Bake for 40 minutes at 350 degrees F. The interior temperature of the loaf should be about 200 degrees F by that time. Tip the loaf out of the pan and onto a rack to cool. If you have used fed and refrigerated starter instead of starter that was fermented at room temperature overnight, it may take as long as 20 minutes more at 350 degrees F to finish cooking the inside of the loaf.

The final weight of this loaf is about 3.5 - 3.75 pounds.

comments
Submitted by MangoChutney - ... on Mon, 2011-05-16 23:41.
If you have two of these pans, as I happen to have, you can invert the second one over the first instead of using aluminum foil. Unfortunately I have not found a way to secure them together, but the top one does has not seemed to be inclined to slide off the bottom one once it is lined up on all four sides. This is a savings in aluminum foil, and also avoids having dents in your bread from places where the foil interfered with the oven spring.
Submitted by ninaoftwo on Thu, 2011-05-26 21:07.
Oh, my, this bread looks scrumptious. I doubt I could ever make it. It sounds like a long process, but I'm sure the end result justifies the time and effort involved. I'm sure your family loves your bread.
Submitted by emnm-mom on Sun, 2012-12-23 10:14.
I am working with sourdough starter for the first time. I only bake whole wheat bread. I don't even have white flour in my pantry. This recipe sounds heavenly. I don't have the pan called for in the recipe!! Can I use a different pan? I am anxious to make sourdough whole wheat bread. Thanks!

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