I’ve been trying some new techniques and have ended up with a few major fails. I’ll start documenting those for the blog but for now I’m sticking with successes. I was looking for a hardy and healthy loaf so I went with a 75% whole wheat bread that I added some sunflower seeds and pepitas to.

Schedule: I based this loaf off of my bakers yeast schedule.

Ingredients:

Note: This dough makes enough for two loaves

Dough

• 750g whole wheat flour
• 250g bread flour
• 800g filtered water @ 90’F
• 22g sea salt
• 3g bakers yeast
• 45g each: sunflower seeds & pepitas

Method:

I started with a 30 minute autolyse with all of the flours and the water.

After mixing the dough, I performed 3 stretch and folds within the first 90 minutes. The first stretch and fold was done after 10 minutes and then the next two were separated by 35 minutes each. The kitchen was hovering around 68’F so I went with a full 5 hour bulk fermentation.

After fermenting I divided the dough and I proofed them for 1 hour in bannetons before placing them in a dutch ovens.

I baked the loaves in a preheated oven at 450’F for 38 minutes covered, then removed the lid of the dutch oven and baked for an additional 15 minutes.

Result:

Due to the amount of whole wheat flour in this recipe it ended up being a little on the denser side, but that’s what I was looking for. Given such a high percentage of whole wheat flour, the rise was pretty good.

The flavor is obviously intense whole wheat but you can certainly taste the sunflower seeds in there. The crust has a nice thickness that lends way to a softer crumb.

My plan is to use this bread for soups. The denser crumb will help soak up all the delicious soup and still hold its shape.

My Baking Notes

• Ambient Temperature: 68’F
• Started autolyse @ 6:15am
• Water temp: 90’F
• Dough was 86’F at autolyse
• Mixed @ 6:50am
• Dough was 80’F after mixing
• 3 stretch and folds over first 90 minutes
• Started proof @ 11:55am
• Into oven @ 12:55pm