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