It's always nice to have a Seeded Sourdough loaf in your arsenal. The aroma while baking is wonderful and the flavour of the seeds comes through really nicely. If you want, you can really push the hydration levels with these loaves because the seeds do tend to soak up quite a bit of liquid. For this bread I like to laminate the seeds into the dough, not for a marbled effect but to try and preserve the gluten network. I find that if I mix them in at the same time as the salt they tend to tear the dough a bit more and the results don't come out as nicely for me. For this bake I just stuck with black sesame seeds, white sesame seeds and poppy seeds. With all those seeds being pretty small I really like the texture this combination offers, but sometimes I add in sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds as well.
Ingredients (Two Loaves)
600g (75%) Robin Hood All-Purpose Flour
100g (12.5%) Nunweilers Kamut Flour
100g (12.5%) One Degree Organic Sprouted Spelt Flour
640g (80%) Water
16g (2%) Salt
160g (20%) Levain
180g (22.5%) Seeds (60g Black Sesame, 60g White Sesame, 60g Poppy)
Process
8:30am- Levain Build with 25g of Starter: 75g warm water: 75g Flour blend (75% White, 25% Dark Rye)
12:30pm- Autolyse with 600g of the water
1:30pm- Mix in 160g of Levain & 20g of the water
2:00pm- Mix in Salt with the remaining 20g of water
2:30pm- Coil Fold
3:15pm- Laminate Seeds into the dough
3:45pm- Coil Fold
4:15pm- Coil Fold
5:00pm- Coil Fold
5:45pm Coil Fold
6:40pm- Divide and Pre-shape
6:55pm- Shape, rest 5 minutes
7:00pm- Mist the tops of the dough with water and roll in seeds to coat the tops. Place seed side down in Banneton (no need to use flour as the seeds prevent sticking)
6:00am- Preheat Challenger Bread Pan to 500°F
6:40am- Score the dough and bake at 450°F for 22 minutes with the lid on, then 22 minutes with the lid off. I added an ice cube to the pan just before putting the lid on to generate some more steam.
Notes: This recipe makes two loaves of bread. I find 80% Hydration is a good starting point. If it seems kind of high don't worry, it will act like dough that is much lower once those seeds get added in.
I toast the sesame seeds ahead of time and then let them cool down before laminating them into the dough with the poppy seeds. This really helps give it a bold sesame taste. Don't bother toasting the ones that you use to coat the tops...those toast up nicely in the oven!
As with almost all my bakes, I used my Proofer to keep a stable environment for my Bulk Fermentation.
Your fermentation times may vary depending on a lot of different factors. Use these times for the folding and the duration of the Bulk Fermentation only as a guideline. What worked for me may need to be tweaked a little bit for your bake.