Spent Grain + Whole Wheat Standard Loaf

My sourdough culture has been acting up lately (really low gluten development), so I wanted to go back to basics with a standard bakers yeast recipe. If you’ve read my previous posts, you’ve probably seen how I really like using spent grain flour in my loaves to help give it an extra boost of whole grain flavor. These loaves are packed with spent grain and whole wheat for an extremely hardy and flavorful slice of bread.

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

Ingredients:

Dough

920g bread flour
45g spent grain flour (or substitute dark rye or whole wheat)
35g whole wheat flour
780g filtered water @ 90’F
22g sea salt
4g bakers yeast
sesame and poppy seeds for topping

Method:

I started with a 30 minute autolyse with the flour and water.

After mixing the salt and yeast into the dough, I performed 4 stretch and folds within the first 90 minutes, separated by 20 minutes. The kitchen was hovering around 72’F so I went with a full 5 hour bulk fermentation. The dough had some extremely large bubbles forming by the end of fermentation (see pics below).

I proofed for 45 minutes in a banneton before placing it in a dutch oven.

I baked the loaf in a preheated dutch oven at 450’F for 20 minutes covered, then removed the lid of the dutch oven and baked for an additional 30 minutes.

Result:

I decided to let one loaf naturally separate for venting and I tried scoring the other one but didn’t cut deep enough into the proofed dough so it didn’t vent as well as I hoped. This caused the loaf to be a little undersized and denser than I would have liked.

Venting issues for the one loaf aside, the flavor is exactly what I was looking for. These loaves smell and taste full of whole wheat and dark graininess.