Sifted Wheat Sourdough Method (adjustments)

Dear friends,

I wanted to make a quick post about how to adjust my Whole Wheat Artisan Sourdough Method for used with our sifted wheat flour.

The recipe above is not highly specialized. It's really just a basic overview of Tartine-style sourdough baking, but with a few adjustments made to make it perfect for our whole kernel wheat flour. A more traditional sourdough is made from a sifted stone milled wheat flour, which is still rich in whole grain content, and complex flavors, but is much lighter than whole kernel flours.

So here are the adjustments I suggest making to the recipe/videos if you want to bake with predominantly sifted wheat flour:

Water:

Reduce the water by about 100 grams. Sifted wheat flour requires a bit less water. If you don't feel like it has enough water, you can add it back in.

You actually can't really have too much water. There are professional bakers who like to add significantly more water than any of these recommendations. Sometimes up to 950 grams or so. This can have some benefits in the texture of the final crumb. But a very wet dough requires more and more care and refined technique to shape and develop properly. It's very tricky indeed to work with a super wet dough. But of course you can get the hang of it if you want to play around with it, but think of high hydration dough as an advanced baking technique.

In short, water content is a matter of personal taste and style.

Salt:

Secondly, I would reduce the salt to about 20-22 grams. This makes it close to most mainstream recommendations for sourdough salt level. I add a little extra with the whole kernel recipe because there are so many deep, dark flavors that I find the salt helps bring them out.

 

Soaker time:

My whole wheat sourdough recipe specifies a very long soaker time (when we mix the flour and water together and just let it sit). Such a long soaker is unusual. Most bakers who use soakers only do so for an hour. Again, the whole grain content -- all that bran -- takes more time to soak up all the water. I also do that because it reduces the number of times you have to go to the kitchen and do something: it helps cluster the interactions into just a few trips to the kitchen to simplify the process. You could still try the long soak with the lighter flour. I suspect it would be fine. Might even be better. But it's not a necessary or common practice. Just an hour or so is all that's needed for the soaker.

 

I'm here for any questions. Happy baking!

 

Benjamin

Feeding your starter

Hey guys! Here's how to maintain your starter. There are actually many ways. People use different flours, different schedules, different ratios of flour to water. If you are new, I would just do it this way. This is simple, and works well for me. You can experiment all you want, though. If you have any issues, let me know!

First, keep it in a container, e.g. a glass jar, that has a lid that you can just set on the top but not seal. You don't want to seal it, just cover it. Keep it somewhere that's not too hot or cold. For instance, don't keep it in a cabinet over your oven. Anywhere that stays a normal indoor temperature is fine.

Every morning, you will take equal parts starter, flour, and water (you could do any amount as long as they are equal parts), and mix them together. Obviously if you used all the starter, when you feed it, it would triple in size every day, and soon fill up your entire house! So it's best to throw out about 2/3rds of the starter every morning when you feed it. I keep my starter at about 30grams of yesterdays starter, 30grams of flour, and 30grams of water.

If you have a kitchen scale, it's best to measure those equal parts by weight, but that's not essential. You can just eye-ball it. (The scale will be very useful with bread, because all good bread recipes go by weight and not by cups, etc. So I recommend getting a kitchen scale if you don't have one.)

When you are going to make bread, you will want to use some of the starter that has not been fed in a while (we call this a "mature" starter). So in that case, you would take a bit out to use to start your bread recipe, and then take some more out to feed and keep maintaining for the future, and then if there is any leftover after you take those two parts out, you just throw the rest away.

Last thing. If you ever want to stop feeding it for a while, and you won't be baking, you can just screw on the container lid and put it in the fridge. You don't want to do this for more than a few weeks, I don't think. When you want to use it again, you will want to take it out of the fridge a few days early, and feed it normally for several days before using it. This will build its strength back up.

Happy Baking!
Benjamin

Whole Wheat Artisan Sourdough Method!

Thank you all so much for your patience as I get this recipe together. Here it is. I'll keep adding to it asap! Please ask questions or add your thoughts in the comments, so that everyone can benefit!

Makes two loaves.

Soaker Recipe:

• 1000 grams flour (200 grams of white flour + 800 grams of whole kernel wheat flour)
• 825 grams water, room temp.

Levain Recipe:

• 20 grams mature starter (starter that was fed about one whole feeding cycle ago)
• 115 grams flour
• 115 grams water

Additional ingredients:

• 24 grams salt (Not iodized table salt. Any salt without iodine will do.) 

Step 1:

In the morning, mix up the Soaker and Levain, separately. Set them aside until the afternoon. The levain needs to rise to about 2x its original volume by the afternoon. If it's coming along slowly, move it to a warmer area, such as in your oven (if the oven is totally cool) with the oven light on. (If you have a new-fangled oven with LEDs, this is useless, because they only produce light!)

Here's a video of me doing exactly this, this morning!




Step 2:

I have to run get the mill going. Be back soon!

Ok, I'm back. When the the Levain doubles in size, ideally between 2pm-4pm, it's time to combine all of the bread ingredients: the soaker, the levain, and the salt.

This is where you want to start being somewhat delicate and conscious about how you mix the dough. Don't think of it as a bunch of dough in a bowl. Think of it as a single mass, an object, which you are folding over itself. If you need to cut it a few times by pinching it between your fingers, in order to get the levain to really combine, that's fine at this stage, but don't do that hereafter.



* Sorry the sound cuts out at the end. I just say to turn the dough every 30 minutes for 2 hours, or 4 times total.

Step 3:

We now have bread dough! Congratulations! But what to do with it? Not much, actually. That's the key.

First, we want to "turn" the dough every 30 minutes, for 2 hours (so 4 times). Why? This involves basically stretching and wrapping the dough over itself. The key to bread is gluten, and gluten is long strands. The way to encourage their formation and good structure is by aligning them into parallel strands, and this we do by stretching out the dough. We do this in a determined, but not rough way. We want to give it a good stretch and fold it over, but not tear it more than necessary.

Think of the mass of dough as a sheet of wrapping paper, and we want to fold it in on itself from all four corners, by picking up each and folding it over onto itself. Each time we "turn" the dough, we do all four of these folds.




Step 4:

Ok, so we have turned our dough 4 times over 2 hours. We should notice it feeling more supple and plump, having more "structure." Pudding does not have structure. Jello does. It wants to hold its shape, it cares about its form a little bit. That's structure. It should have some degree of structure at this point.

Now we are entering the phase called bulk fermentation. It's really the hardest part. Put a cover over it (I like a plastic cover, but don't seal it) and leave it alone for about 3 or 4 hours.

This stage is vital, because all this time out in room temperature is allowing fermentation and gluten development (yes those little strands keep building their structure even without your help). If you cut this time short and put it in the fridge now for the morning, it would likely be under-fermented and not work out so well. I would err on the side of fermenting it too much at this stage. The only problem I sometimes run into is that it keeps me up too late at night. If that happens, start earlier in the morning next time, or use a little heat to get that levain rising faster.

After bulk fermentation, it is time to do the only part of this process that really requires much technique. We are going to divide the loaves into two, pre-shape them, let them rest on the counter for about 15 minutes, shape them, and then put them in baskets or towel-lined bowls, and put them in the fridge overnight. We'll bake in the morning!

Ok, how to pre-shape and shape the loaves (they're both the same)? I could explain it using somewhat tortured language, but I will film myself doing it asap, hopefully tonight, and upload that. That will make it much easier to understand. See you then!



Step 5:
OK, it's tomorrow morning. I'm going to run bake these now:



Step 6: Success! Take a look at the final result!

Welcome!

In a time of growing uncertainty, there's no better place to look for answers than at the bottom of a sack of flour. Benjamin Holland is a small-scale artisan Miller on the north side of Chicago, grinding the finest local, family-farmed, sustainably grown grains between hand-sharpened, American granite millstones. My small cottage business is ready for safe, no-contact pickup, though I would love to see pics when you pull 'em out of the oven! Physical distancing doesn't have to be social distancing. Let's keep sourcing the finest products from our local growers and millers, and keep giving the gift of bread (and all the baked goods!) to our neighbors and loved ones. Contact me at (773) 675-7359 or truegrainartisanmilling@gmail.com, and let's get the stones turning!