Having a two year old makes it extremely hard to find time for full sourdough bakes. Since I needed some bread, I went back to the basics and made a double batch of same-day bakers yeast loaves that have a little bit of whole wheat and spelt flour in them.

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

Ingredients:

Dough

I made a double batch so I could have some extra bread in the freezer. You can divide everything in half if you’d only like to make one loaf.

• 850g bread flour
• 75g Cascade Mills organic whole wheat flour
• 75g spelt flour
• 770g filtered water @ 91’F
• 20g sea salt
• 4g yeast

Method:

I wasn’t able to sleep in so I got an early start on these loaves. I started with a 30 minute autolyse with the flour and water.

After the autolyse I mixed in the salt and yeast, performing 3 stretch and folds within the first 90 minutes, separated by 30 minutes. Bulk fermentation lasted around 4.5 hours. There were some big bubbles in the fermented dough before proofing (see pic below).

I divided the loaves, shaped them and then proofed for 60 minutes in bannetons at room temperature, then moved them into the freezer for about 15 minutes to try and stiffen them up for easier transferring to dutch ovens and scoring. The freezer technique worked pretty well and I’ll do that again for any room temperature proofing I do.

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

Result:

The crust on these loaves is nice and crunchy with some slight caramelization due to the longer time baking uncovered. The crumb is compact and excellent for toast or cheesy bread. I prefer tighter crumbs so stuff doesn’t leak through your bread.

After the loaves cooled down, I drizzled some high quality organic olive oil on top and it was incredible how such a simple snack can taste so good.

Next time I’ll try baking at a slightly higher temp uncovered to get a slightly darker exterior.

My Baking Notes

• Ambient Temperature: 73’F
• Started autolyse @ 5:50am
• Water temp: 91’F
• Dough was 88’F at autolyse
• Mixed @ 6:23am
• Dough was 81’F after mixing
• 3 stretch and folds over first 90 minutes
• Started proof @ 10:50am
• Into oven @ 12:05pm