Every Day Bread

This is my every day bread – or to be more accurate, one version of it. I play around with the recipe on a weekly basis, add things, remove things and adjust the timing or the process a little here and there. You can make this without the two soakers and have a pretty good bread, but the flakes, grains and seeds add something interesting to the finished bread. This all goes back to a German TV program I watched a while ago about Günther Weber and his wood fired bakery at the Lorettohof in Zwiefalten, Germany. The video showed a bread based on two different sourdoughs: Rye and wheat. I took that as inspiration and started to experiment. First with some additional commercial yeast, but eventually relying just on the lifting power of natural sourdough.

There is a book (in German) by Günther Weber with a a number of delicious recipes from his bakery: Gut Brot Will Weile Haben.

If you are not too fond of the sourness of sourdough bread, you can substitute the wheat sourdough part with a wheat preferment (225g white whole wheat, 225g water, 1/8 tsp yeast), and then add 3g minus 1/8 tsp yeast to the final dough. The rye sourdough is very mild and not very sour.

Here area few “family pictures” from a few years of experimenting with this recipe:

This recipe assumes you are familiar with sourdough maintenance, and how to bake bread in a home oven with stream. If you need any pointers, take a look at e.g. Ken Forkish’s book “Flour Water Salt Yeast”.

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Every Day Bread

Course Bread

Servings 3 loafs

Author Karl Heinz Kremer

Ingredients

Rye Sourdough

• 50 g active rye starter
• 200 g Stone ground whole rye flour
• 200 g Water

Wheat Sourdough

• 50 g active wheat starter
• 200 g White whole wheat flour
• 200 g Water

Grain Soaker

• 100 g Grain cereal
• 50 g Rolled Kammut flakes
• 200 g Boiling water
• 1 g Salt

Sunflower Seed Soaker

• 100 g Sunflower seeds
• 200 g Boiling water
• 1 g Salt

Final Dough

• 450 g Rye sourdough
• 450 g Wheat sourdough
• 351 g Grain soaker
• 301 g Sunflower seed soaker
• 750 g AP flour
• 340 g Water
• 22 g Salt

Instructions

Sourdough Starter and Soakers

1. Prepare all four sourdoughs and soakers the evening before you want to bake (e.g. 10pm for picking things up again at 9am).

2. On the next morning, check for standing water in the two soakers, if there is any, reserve and use as part of the water for the final dough.
   

Final Dough

1. Add all ingredients to bowl of stand mixer and mix for three minutes on low and one minute on medium. Move the dough from the mixing bowl to a large bowl that allows you to fold the dough. Stretch and fold the dough (I do 20 s&f's) three to four times in five minute intervals.
2. Cover and let the dough rise in the bowl for 2 to 3 hours, until doubled in size.
3. Dump the dough on a lightly flowered surface and divide into two or three parts and shape into loafs or boules. When baking three breads, each will be about 750g.
4. Preheat oven to 500F.
5. Let the shaped loafs/boules proof for about one hour. Bake with steam for 35-40 minutes. Let cool completely before cutting into a loaf. These breads freeze well: I usually keep half a loaf

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