Wheat sourdough bread

April 30, 2017

It’s been a while since I baked a wheat only bread. And it’s nice when someone give’s me a reason to make something I haven’t done for a while.

Minęło już trochę odkąd ostatni raz upiekłem chleb wyłącznie pszenny. I miło, gdy ktoś daje mi powód, abym zrobił coś, czego nie robiłem od dawna.

Remember Kwiatek, Helena’s sourdough? After it was made we used it to also make bread. The special thing about Kwiatek is that (it has a name and) it’s made purely using strong wheat flour. When you have a wholemeal flour sourdough, getting it completely clean takes time, and if we decide not to wait, we get a bit darker bread. Maybe it’s only in my head, but I do notice that the result is different. Now we’ve got a bit of strong flour sourdough which we can use straight away. We used it to make wheat bread from Piotr Kucharski’s book “Chleb. Domowa piekarnia” (sources).

Helena’s sourdough

It worked really well for the kids – you get a 60% hydration dough which is quite stiff and easy to handle. Even Antoni was able to shape his own loaf.

Planning

This bread takes long time to bulk proof, so I recommend making the levain in the morning (8-12 hours), doing the bulk proof overnight (8-12 hours), then in the morning shaping (3-4 hours) and baking (45-50 minutes).

I recommend rice flour for dusting whatever you proof your loaves in, as nothing sticks to it (and it’s also very light in colour).

Wheat sourdough bread

Ingredients

Levain

120 g sourdough
500 g strong white wheat flour
400 g water

The dough

1020 g levain
560 g strong white wheat flour
225 g water
17 g salt
Wheat sourdough bread

Preparation

If you store your sourdough in the fridge, take it out and let it warm up for an hour or so
Mix all ingredients to make the levain and leave them for 8-12 hours to become slightly sour in smell and bubbly.
Mix all bread ingredients. I used a mixer for about 4 minutes on low speed, pretty much just for the ingredients to combine.
Leave it covered with kitchen foil, in room temperature, for 8-12 hours. In my case overnight
If possible, do a stretch and fold after about two hours
Divide the dough and shape loaves. I made two round ones and placed them in heavily dusted bannetons. Leave them covered for 3-4 hours in room temperature. I placed the baskets in plastic bags. If you want, you can put the loaves in bannetons seam side down, then you can skip scoring before baking as the loaves will open quite randomly (as mines did)
If you are using a stone or a cast iron pot to bake your bread, put it in the oven some an hour before baking and set the oven to 220 degrees Celsius. If you bake on a regular baking tray, 30 minutes will be enough. Do not use a fan for baking the bread (or lower the temperature by some 20 degrees and monitor it). Know your oven
Make steam in your oven, score the loaves and get baking. Bake for 45-50 minutes
Baked loaves give a hollow sound when knocked on the bottom. If you are not sure, give your loaf additional 5-10 minutes
Place baked loaves on the cooling rack. Let them cool before you eat them
Wheat sourdough bread

The bread is absolutely moreish. Very tasty, very soft, very enjoyable. I do recommend you try it. If you don’t have a strong flour sourdough, just take a teaspoon of whatever you have, 50 grams of water and 40 grams of strong flour, and after 8-12 hours add more water and flour in same proportions. It will still have some bran in it, but it will be just fine. If you want to have a very clean sourdough, discard most of the new mixture every day and fill with the amounts of flour and water mentioned above. It will take 2-3 days to make it completely clean.