Multigrain Bread
Feb 13th, 2010 by SteveB
Alright everyone. Get out your monogrammed stationery and Cross pen. This is a bread that you simply must write home about.
Up until this point, I’ve not been a real big fan of multigrain bread. Perhaps it’s because I’ve never had the pleasure of sampling a really well-made multigrain loaf. To me, multigrain bread has always conjured up images of heavy, dry and tasteless planks of corrugated cardboard. But with my New Year’s resolution of trying to eat foods that are better for me (no, I won’t totally be giving up the occasional croissant or slice of brioche but I am trying to eat less and include only natural, additive-free foods in my diet), I decided to revisit the world of whole grains.
My main objective was to produce a light crumbed, complex flavored loaf with whole grains. As a starting point, I decided to use the Five-Grain Levain described in Hamelman’s Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes as a template. This bread makes use of a soaker consisting of cracked rye, flaxseeds, sunflower seeds and oats, and, in addition to the use of whole wheat flour, calls for some high gluten flour to support the structure of such a grain- and seed-laden bread. I ended up using cracked hard red winter wheat instead of cracked rye in the soaker (who would have guessed that rye berries would be so hard to find in both the national chain and local health food stores?) and found that I had to increase the dough hydration substantially from that specified in the original formula to obtain a beautiful dough with just the right balance of elasticity and extensibility. For those mixing by hand, be forewarned that in the early stages of mixing, right after the addition of the soaker, the dough becomes quite sticky and slippery but then becomes much better behaved upon further mixing and full incorporation of the soaker.
Since the first of the year, I’ve been concentrating my efforts on extracting more of the subtle flavors available from a properly formulated and fermented dough and the incredibly rich, nutty and caramel-like flavor of this bread leads me to believe that I may be making some progress.
Levain
- 250 g King Arthur All-Purpose Flour
- 315 g Water
- 50 g 100% Hydration Sourdough Starter
Soaker
- 95 g Cracked Hard Red Winter Wheat
- 95 g Flaxseeds
- 75 g Sunflower Seeds
- 75 g Oat Groats
- 405 g Boiling Water
- 7 g Salt
Final Dough
- 500 g King Arthur Sir Lancelot (high gluten) Flour
- 250 g King Arthur Organic Whole Wheat Flour
- 360 g Water
- 15 g Salt
- 1 tsp Instant Dried Yeast
- 560 g Levain (a small amount of the prepared levain is discarded)
- All of the Soaker
The evening before the bake, the levain is prepared by whisking the mature starter in the water until fully dispersed. The flour is then added and the mixture once again whisked until a smooth, pancake-like batter is obtained. The mixture is then covered and allowed to sit overnight at 72ºF for approximately 12 hours until mature. The soaker is also prepared the preceding evening by mixing together the cracked wheat, flaxseeds, sunflower seeds, oats and salt in a heatproof bowl and then pouring the boiling water onto the mixture. This mixture is also covered and allowed to sit overnight at room temperature.
The following morning, the final dough is prepared by adding 560 g of the prepared levain to the water in a stand mixer bowl and the bowl contents are mixed using the whisk attachment at speed 3 for 1 minute. A mixture of the high gluten flour, the whole wheat flour and the instant dried yeast is then added and the bowl contents are mixed using a spiral dough hook at speed 2, just until all the ingredients come together, approximately 2 minutes. The bowl and its contents are then allowed to rest at 72ºF for an autolyse period of 30 minutes. After this time, the salt is added and the dough is mixed at speed 3 for 5 minutes using the spiral dough hook. All of the soaker is then added and the sticky, slippery mixture is mixed at speed 2 until all the ingredients are incorporated. Occasionally, it was found necessary to stop the mixer, manually fold the dough a bit, and then restart the mixer to get all the soaker incorporated. After the incorporation, the dough is then mixed for an additional 5 minutes on speed 3 until the dough just begins to separate from the walls and bottom of the mixing bowl.
The dough is then placed in a lightly oiled container, covered and allowed to ferment for 2 hours, with a fold given halfway through the fermentation period. The dough is then divided into 3 pieces, pre-shaped into rounds and allowed to rest at room temperature for 15 minutes. The dough pieces are then shaped into batards, placed in brotformen coated with rice flour, covered and allowed a second fermentation of an additional 2 hours at 72ºF. The batards are then unloaded onto a peel, scored, loaded into a preheated 450ºF oven and baked for 40 minutes, the first 20 minutes being under steam. The loaves are allowed to fully cool to room temperature before slicing.
Submitted to YeastSpotting
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Hi Steve,
I am young baker on French riviera and I search new recipes. I settled a question. I would like to know if you incorporate l ‘eau of tempering of kernels in your paste? Because it seems to me a lot. They attain a rate moisturizing superior in 100 % ?? Sorry my English is very bad. Amicably SÁ©bastien
Bonjour SÁ©bastien,
All 405 g of the water added to the seeds and grain of the soaker are completely absorbed by the seeds and grain so, yes, all the water added to the soaker becomes part of the dough. Please be aware, though, that American flours tends to have a higher protein content than French flours, so American flours requires more water than French flours to produce a dough of a given consistency. You will probably need to decrease the amount of water in the recipe for the flour that you are using.
SÁ©bastien, your English is quite good but if you’d rather write in French in the future, please feel free to do so. As long as you don’t mind my answering in English. I have a lot more trouble writing in French than I do reading it! 🙂
AmitiÁ©s,
Steve
I have 3 loaves cooling right now and some winter veggie soup on the stove. I can’t wait. Thanks for this and all the recipes.
Hi Steve… what a beautiful bread! I am wondering if you could share your recipe of 100% Hydration Sourdough Starter. I baked some other breads before but I did not have to used starter. I would like to try to make one of this bread by the time I figure out the starter…thanks!
Hi Louise,
The procedure for preparing a sourdough starter can be found here.
thanks Steve… I started my started yesterday . Do I have to always weigh the starter (100 g) before I feed it or is that only applies on the first day?
Louise,
Whenever a starter is being fed, I recommend that each component (starter, flour and water) be weighed to insure that the proper quantity of each is being used.
I am new to making sourdough breads (and fairly new to making bread in general), this is only my second attempt (first was your tahini bread).
Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out at all. It must have had way too much liquid and spread out all over the cooking tray and was thus only about 5 cm high. I think the taste is good though a bit too salty.
So, I’m sure its a difference in flours here in Finland vs. there in the US. I also haven’t yet figured out how to know for sure I’m using a comparable flour since I can’t read the labels in finnish just yet. I used a regular grind of wheat which looked and felt to me like an AP flour for the high gluten flour, and a flour made from wheat called “partially milled” which I took to be wholewheat flour. It looked and felt like the wholewheat flours in the US anyway. Everything else was completely by the recipe so I am guessing its some difference in the flour so next time I’ll reduce it quite a lot.
Thanks for all your tips and demonstrations you put on here. It helps me as a beginner to try to figure out how to do even what you might consider to be minor.
Hi Cari,
As you probably know, different flours can have dramatically different water absorption characteristics. Use the amount of water specified in a recipe only as a guide. It is more important to add just enough water to yield a dough with the desired softness/firmness than to add the exact quantity of water specified in the recipe. Let your senses be your guide.
Being new to bread baking, if you haven’t already done so, you might want to read one or more of the bread books recommended on this site. They will provide you with a firm foundation of bread baking knowledge that would otherwise be difficult or time-consuming to acquire by trial and error baking alone.
[…] going to attempt this one. It isn’t a sourdough bread but it does use my natural […]
i have a suggestion with respect to the various flours that may be difficult to find, especially in this recipe. the Sir Lancelot is only mail order and is quite pricey for a 3 lb bag. one can mix in vital wheat gluten to increase the protein level of a given flour. King arthur publishes the percentages on their website. it takes a little math, but it is far cheaper and faster than buying mail order flour. i added 35g (of the total 500g) of 60% protein gluten to king arthur bread flour to roughly make sir lancelot’s 14.2% protein. the results have been consistently wonderful. be sure and check which gluten you buy as they range in purity, another brand i saw was 85% protein.
Does anyone have this recipe in measured cup/tablespoon type amounts?
looks great!
This recipe produces a great loaf! For those of you who track nutrient consumption, I calculated the following values per gram of finished bread:
calories 3.3
protein 0.13
fat 0.0
Carbohydrates 0.73
I’ll be trying this soon–still stuck on making a variation of your pain au levain every weekend in which I use whole wheat in place of rye flour (because I keep forgetting to pick up the rye) that my family loves. I’m at about 50/50 on the white flour/whole wheat flour and it turns out great.
A couple of suggestions because I’ve baked a lot of whole-grain breads over the years, for people who might have trouble finding some of the ingredients:
– In place of the cracked wheat berries try using bulgur wheat, which is, after all, cracked wheat. It’s had a bit more processing than whole grains simply being smashed, but should have much of the toothiness.
– In place of whole oat grouts use Scottish or Irish oats, which are a coarser grind of the whole groat than standard processed oat flakes.
– As a vegetarian I wonder about the value of using ground flaxseed in place of the whole seeds. As I understand it, more of the omega nutrients are available when the seed is ground; flax is one of the ways I get this. It would also be less “intrusive” in the dough when ground, for those who don’t like little bits of things (I do). I’m assuming grinding also makes more of the high oil content of the seed available to the dough so it may change the consistency, though, and would have to be adjusted for.
– And, while it wouldn’t be quite the same mix (which sounds wonderful), if you had a bit of leftover cooked hot cereal of any kind I’d guess you could substitute that for part or all of the soaker and get decent results, although not the same as this, obviously. Any time I make a loaf of bread with leftover oatmeal in it, it has a wonderful silkiness. I’m big on recycling and bread-baking is one way I accomplish this, which means no two loaves are the same.
Thank you again for such an incredibly rich bread-baking resource and your wonderfully engaged readers.
Barb,
Thanks for all your suggestions.
[…] baking too much again. Not meaning to, but it happens. I decided to try this recipe from a gorgeous bread blog called “Bread cetera” (too bad there ain’t updates […]
Hello Steve, congratulations for such a beautiful bread, my feelings to wholegrain breads are just what you describe but this one is wonderful.
I have a question though, why do you still need to use yeast if you are using sourdough already?
After several tryings, I finally have got not one but sourdoughs starters, one from spelta (after three days) and the other from white flour (after 7 days), and I thought I had to throw away my commercial yeast 😀
Thank you.
Hi Fernando,
The use of baker’s yeast in this formula is not a necessity. It is used here to insure a consistent rise in the product. If you choose not to use baker’s yeast, be sure to modify the fermentation and proofing times appropriately.
I have been using this formula for about a year now to make our everyday bread. It is a great bread. The only change I have made is to use whole wheat berries rather than cracked. I soak them separately in room temperature water for at least 24 hours. They are a bit crunch if I include them in the overnight soaker. After 24 hours they have started to sprout and provide a good texture to the bread.
[…] a few years ago, and it looked good. I decided, without much forethought, to have a go myself. The Bread cetera recipe was scaled to produce three loaves. I only wanted to make one but, rather than properly calculating […]
Hi
Thank you for the great recipe! I have done this recipe with a bob red mill 5 grain cereal as a soaker with great success. It’s easier to come bye then some of the ingredients individually. Thanks again!
Jodi
hola en el pan de cereales se puede sustituir el cracked rojo que donde vivo no lo venden por semillas de calabaza o semillas de sÁ©samo
gracias nancy
Hola Nancy,
Feel free to experiment, substituting whatever grains or seeds that are available to you for the grains and seeds specified in the recipe.
Hi Steve,
Thanks for sharing this recipe. I’m a novice baker and still trying to get the dough consistency right. When you talk about substituting grains or seeds — does that include nuts? I would like to add some walnuts. What do you think?
Hi anniek,
By all means, feel free to try adding chopped walnuts to the dough.
Hi Steve,
Is there anything wrong with boiling the whole grains (used in the soaker) a few minutes to soften them a little before incorporating them in the bread dough?
annie k,
Adding boiling water to the soaker grains and allowing it to soak overnight, as the recipe states, will soften the soaker sufficiently. There is no need to boil the soaker for any extended period of time.
Hello Steve,
I am doing this now, I am at the autolyse part, and I wonder if I have to use the water from the soaker or only the grains?
I think it’s only grains, because that would make a 110% or so hydratation of the dough, but I still need a confirmation from you because I’m a newbie to bread and I don’t want to mess it up 😉
Thanks for your help
Stephanie
Hi Stephanie,
After the water is added to the grains to make the soaker and the soaker is allowed to sit overnight, most if not all of the water should have been absorbed by the grains. The entire grains/water soaker should be added to the dough.
Hi Steve,
I love the recipe and I’m finally figuring out how to make a loaf I can share with friends. Thank you for sharing the recipe and answering questions.
I would like to change the taste a bit — would it be ok to eliminate the whole wheat flour and just use bread flour? I’m thinking for trying Montana Prairie Gold flour. Should I adjust the recipe? I would still use the soaker with the grains you recommend.
One more question — is there any advantage to lengthening the fermentation? In some recipes I’ve seen where the dough is put in the refrigerator overnight to ferment. Just curious your thoughts on that.
Thanks again for all your help.
Hi annie k,
Changing the whole wheat flour to bread flour might change the flavor significantly but if that is what you are after, then by all means make the change. Just be aware that you may have to use less water during mixing to yield a dough of the proper consistency.
In some cases, up to a point, lengthening the fermentation time with a concomitant cooling of the dough can result in an improved flavor profile. Give it a try and see if you prefer the result.
[…] is based on a recipe by Steve B., whose blog Bread Cetera is a valuable resource for those of us who wish to expand our […]