A perfectly crispy crust that almost splinters when I cut through it. The smell of freshly baked, warm bread, smells completely different depending on which types of flour I use. An airy crumb that is slightly chewy when I bite into it.
The joys of home-baked and perfectly warm bread are many! I bake all our bread myself, and it doesn’t matter if it’s airy sourdough buns, soft yeast buns or sweet chocolate buns, the joy is always the same. Home-baked bread can do something very special, and we really appreciate it at home.
That’s why I also love experimenting with bread baking. At the moment, I spend quite a lot of time practising shaping and slicing the loaves so that they turn out nice and rise nicely when they land on my baking tray in the oven. I have tried to divide the recipe into steps so that it is easier to read and understand. But don’t be intimidated – even though there are quite a few steps, the working time is not that great, and the joy when you stand with your own, freshly baked sourdough bread makes it so worth it!
You will need this:
Pre-Dough:
24 g sourdough Mix
48 g coarse island wheat
31 g room temperature water
Dough:
475 g wheat flour
10 g malt flour
435 g coarse island wheat
780 g lukewarm water (around 30 degrees)
20 g of salt
104 g predough
2 pcs. raising basket – I use a round raising basket and an oval raising basket
Dough cutter (small, sharp knife)
How to bake sourdough wheat bread:
I have divided the recipe into steps so that it is easier to read and understand. Don’t be intimidated by the many points – the bread doesn’t require that much work time. I’ve listed the times for you to use as a guide so you don’t end up shaping bread in the middle of the night.
Step 1:
5 half an hour before you make the dough, mix the pre-dough together. I did it at 9 in the morning. Stir the three ingredients together, cover the dough with a lid or cling film and leave it at room temperature.
Step 2:
5 1/2 hours later (at 14.30 at my place) stir in 730 g of water (keep 50 g of water for later) and flour well together for autolysis. All the flour must be stirred in. Cover it and place it together with the pre-dough. I use these buckets to keep my dough in – they are easy to work in and I can see if the dough rises and becomes airy.
Step 3:
At 16. Take 30 g of the excess water and use it to mix the pre-dough and the autolyzed dough together. Knead the dough together for 5 minutes – I show in this video how I knead the dough. Put it back in a bowl and let it rest for 5 minutes. Use the least amount of water – if the dough is not too wet – to get the salt into the dough. The dough will separate, but quickly come back together when you start kneading it. Knead the dough for a further 3-4 minutes until the dough becomes airy and creates a strong gluten network so that the dough can more or less keep its shape on the kitchen table.
Place the dough in a bowl greased with a little oil. Here the dough must rise.
Step 4:
Let the dough rise for 4 hours at room temperature of around 24-26 degrees. Make 5 folds on the dough. Fold after ½, 1½, 2, 2½ and 3 hours.
Step 5:
Divide the dough into two equal parts of 900 g. Form the dough lightly into a ball – cover it with a damp tea towel. Let it rest for 30 minutes.
Step 6:
Shape the dough into a round or rectangular loaf – or the shape your breadbasket is in. I use a round breadbasket and an oval breadbasket. Put a linen cloth in your rising basket and sprinkle with half rice flour/half wheat flour. Put the loaves in the rising basket and put a bag around each rising basket. Put the loaves in the fridge until the next day.
Step 7:
Put a baking tray in your oven and turn on the oven at the highest temperature over/under heat. Let the baking steel heat up for a little over an hour. Turn the loaves out and cut them – you can see a video of how I cut a loaf right here. Bake the loaves at 250 degrees for approx. 20 minutes. Turn the oven down to 230 degrees and bake the loaves for a further 25-30 minutes.
