I had never head of Charnushka or Nigella seeds until ITJB so, being the curious type, I ordered some ... and now I'm hooked!

What a wonderful surprise.  These little seeds that look like undersized black sesame taste of black pepper, thyme, onion and I don't know what else.  They are wonderful on top of rolls.  I got some cheaply from www.myspicesage.com but I'm sure other places like Penzey's have them.

Glue them on with egg wash and it's a great way to perk up a plain chewy roll. 

This was inspired by Franko's 25% Sour Rye with Toasted Seeds. I followed his recipe with the following alterations:

• Instead of AP flour, I milled 45% hard red wheat, 45% hard white wheat, and 10% rye, then sifted the results to a final extraction of 85%.
• That said, I ended up adding an extra 1/2 cup of KA BF during kneading to get the stickiness under control 
• After the final stretch-and-fold, I let the final dough proof for another two hours, then refrigerated overnight 
• This morning I took it out of the fridge, let it warm for two hours, shaped, and then let proof for 3.5 hours in a banneton

It's cooling now, I'll taste this evening!

This is my take on Peter Reinhart's whole-grain struan. Instead of adding yeast, I made the firm starter using sourdo.com's San Francisco strain that I've been feeding nothing but home-milled wheat.

For the flour, I milled a mixture of 45% hard red wheat, 45% hard white wheat and 10% rye.

For the soaker I used 2.5 oz roasted (unsalted) sunflower seeds, plus .5 oz each of black seasame seeds, two different kinds of flax seed and two different mustard seeds. These are combined with flour and a little water, then left out overnight.

The firm starter was left out overnight to rise.

The next day, the firm starter and the soaker were worked together on a cutting board, then chopped up into a dozen pieces and mixed with the wet ingredients in my DLX. You can see it come together as I mix the preferments with oil, honey, and agave nectar. I also added in 2T of espresso-ground coffee beans that I'd finished roasting earlier in the day (Costa Rica La Legua Bourbon taken just into the beginning of second crack, for you sweetmarias.com fans), plus a teaspoon of caramel color from KA.

After the dough came together, it got a 15-minute autolyse.

Here's the final dough after another 10 minutes of hand kneading.

For the first 2 hours, I did a stretch-and-fold every half hour. Afterwards, it was left to rise for another 3 hours.

The risen dough was broken into four pieces and shaped for mini-loaves. They proofed for another 2.5 hours.

The loaves were cooked at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.  

The result is a dense, but not at all heavy, bread that is fantastic sliced thin and served with cheese and fruit.

London is going through a heat wave, its hot, properly hot, which means my starter is going super mental and I have to think of new ways of using it and new bread recipes.

This post inspiration came from a glass of orange juice and a bit of nagging from my husband. Result - two loaves of bread, a whiskey orange bread and a seeded bread, one for my breakfast (I am into sweet toast at the moment) and one for my dear husband to satisfy his seeded, crunchy bread craving.

More photos and full recipes on my blog here

Today's bake was a 3-seed sourdough.  I previously posted all ingredients and the method I used, and had to go, and lost it...sigh.  Next time  :)   Here's the pics...tastes lovely.

The seed soaker added extra water even after I drained it.  I can't tell if I underproofed or not.  The crust was nice but I didn't get as much vertical lift as I had hoped.  My scoring kind of just melted back into itself.  I like this a lot better than the wheat germ one, but I think next time I use wheat germ I will soak it first.  I soaked my terra cotta lid for a couple of hours before I baked it.

Seeds everywhere!  Lots of seeds!  Seeds in the dough seeds around the dough.  Seeds, seeds, seeds!  A few nuts too and my favorite flours, Rye and Spelt.   Lots of fibre! 

DOUGH    in order:

• 170g rye sourdough starter 100% hydration
• 600g water at about 20°C  (68°F)    Stir until starter is well dispersed
• 70g dried walnut rye sourdough altus crumbs
• 5g bread spices (blend of crushed coriander, caraway, fennel)
• 100g spelt flour
• 600g rye flour

       Mix until all flour is wet, cover and set aside for about 2 hours.  Then add:

• 13.5g salt
• 70g hemp seeds
• 8g roasted sesame seeds (1 tbs)
• good handful sunflower seeds
• a good handful of crushed poppy seeds 

Work everything in well and let it rest covered 2 hours (22°C)

Here is where things got hung up... getting ready to shape the loaf... didn't like the last loaf shape in the last bake...  Had a couple of hours to think this out so I started debating with myself what other seeds variations I wanted in the loaf, what shape or form to use, banneton or no banneton, clay baker or free form.  I wanted seeds on the outside, liked the way chia seeds made a sort of support on the outside crust and then again, I wanted something interesting going on too.   Ready for a change...  approx. 1650g of dough or too much for a 9x5x4 bread tin.

Staring at a fresh bag of crushed flax and having just had potato flakes on my mind, what if?  What if I rolled the dough in mixed seeds?  What if I rolled them in seeds and piled them up inside my woks to bake?  Would the dough support itself better as smaller dough pieces?  Or would it go flat?  It likes to go flat.  Unmixed seeds?  Testing seed covers?  Little blobs of dough in different colors piled up on each other?  This was beginning to sound like a "monkey bread."  Then I could see rolling balls of rye dough (or dropping globs of wet cement) falling into bowls of various seeds, rolling around and stacking themselves up to make a loaf.  Might prove interesting...  or one big mess.   Will the bread balls separate or allow for slicing?  Mmmm.

Unlike the overly sweet sticky monkey bread, this is the savory version:  Seedy Nutty Monkey Rye

It is actually quite easy with two large wet soup spoons!  Once covered, the dough balls are easy to place and move around.

Drop large spoonfuls of dough (about the size of an egg) into soup bowls with about 1cm deep

• crushed poppy seed (dark gray/black)
• crushed flax seed (brown with shiny specks)
• whole green pumpkin seeds (they turn a beautiful chestnut brown)
• chia seeds (light gray)
• potato flakes (turn dull brown) 

Arrange into a buttered bundt pan (or a pullman pan) cover and allow to rise 3-4 hours. 

I actually used a poke test!  Amazing!  I first steamed the bundt pan inside two woks, one inverted over the other.

Preheat the oven with one wok (2 cm of water inside) to 225°C using the fan setting. 

Place the filled bundt pan inside, cover and steam bake 30 minutes, then remove from oven, quickly take out bundt pan with loaf returning it to the oven to brown and finish baking at 200°C using upper & lower heat setting.  Done when inside loaf temp reaches 96°C and it has rich brown color.   Place rack onto bread and invert.  Remove pan and allow to cool.  Bag overnight.  Cut the next day.

I don't know which side of the loaf should be up, the top or the bottom.  I started out calling it monkey bread.  When it landed on its rack it had mutated into turtle shell bread.

And now for the crumb shots.   An interesting thing happened and it shouldn't be of any surprise... but the coatings that absorb the most amount of water, tend to create the separating problems in the crumb.  The oil containing seeds seem to let the rye dough pass around them to join with neighboring dough balls.  Potato flakes and chia seeds seemed to create natural seams  .  This might be corrected if sprayed with water while arranging.  I could still cut off 1cm slices nicely but to cut .5cm  led some sections to separate. 

The bread tastes like a vollkorn should (yum!) and has an enjoyable bite and flavor that lingers.  We've been eating from it and have not yet spread anything on it.  It is not dry.  Still waiting on the sunshine but as the snow is beginning to fall again...  I'll post what I have.  I used a sharp knife to first cut the loaf in half and then the electric slicer.  Chia was a knife deterrent with its thin tight shell on the crust.

Not too patch work like inside.  Some interesting lines between the sections that run together.  Crumb looks very consistant.

Today was another snowday, so I again canceled a variety of plans to stay home with my son.   Amazing how nicely baking bread fits into that routine.   I had already planned to bake, but had no idea how I was going to fit it in, since I always manage to be out of the house at the exact moment that some essential step has to happen.   No such worries today.   I made Hamelman's 5 grain sourdough for the first time, as well as yet another iteration on my own elusive sourdough.  Actually I made Hamelman's 5 minus 1 plus replacements sourdough.  Since I don't like sunflower seeds, I upped the flax seeds and oats.  I don't have cracked rye (or know what it is) and had just bought a tiny bag of wheat berries, having no idea what to do with them, so I threw them into a coffee grinder and gave them a whirl, and voila - cracked something.   The resulting bread is just awesomely tasty.   Only after I tasted it did I run to this site and search, and see how them as come before me have raved about it.   Absolutely delicious, and compared to what I've been trying to make lately, like a walk in the park.   What other jewels is Hamelman hiding up his sleeve?   Not that he has any duds as far as I can tell.  But some are better than others, and this is just amazing.  

and rye and white sourdoughs side by side:

My sister in law brought back a recipe from her travels (to South Africa) for a "best ever" bread, but I'm uncertain about even trying it. My experience in bread baking so far is limited to lean sourdoughs, so this recipe seems extraordinary. 

It's a recipe for a yeasted bread (20 gr fresh yeast), and it calls for 500 gr flour, 1 cup of castor sugar (that would be about 200 gr, right?), 300 gr water and then 350 gr of mixed seeds (seven kinds). It also uses 5 teaspoons of malt extract and 60 ml syrup (unspecified). And some salt.
The recipe basically says mix, knead, proof, knead again briefly, rise "to top of tin" and bake at 200 C.

In spite of all the sugars, my sister in law says it didn't taste sweet at all. That hardly seems possible to me...

Have any of you ever baked something with so much sugar en seeds? Will it work?

There's been a lot of discussion here about Hamelman's seeded levains (5 Grain Sourdough and Seeded Levain).  Here is an alternative recipe which I find more to my taste-buds and I encourage fans of seeded bread to give it a try.

Although Della Fattoria uses a stiff 49% levain rather than Hamelman's 125%, I think the flavor differences lies more in the mix of ingredients than the method. The flour is half whole wheat (about four times more than Hamelman), with  the remaining flour  "reduced bran" (98% of the germ and 20% of the bran). In other words, this is mostly a wholemeal bread, rather than a white bread augmented with a touch of whole grain.

The following recipe is adapted from Rose Levi Beranbaum's "Sourdough Wheat Bread with Seeds" from her Bread Bible, which she got from Eve Weber of Della Fattoria.  Although you can purchase reduced bran flour from Guisto's, I followed Beranbaum in "recreating" it by adding 2.8% germ and 1.4% bran to 95.8% all purpose flour.  Be careful your whole wheat flour is fresh--not bitter to the taste, and smells fruity when mixed with water. And freeze your germ and bran so they don't go rancid.  With this much whole grain any bitterness will ruin the loaf.

The levain is 49% hydration; the final dough excluding the levain is 79% hydration, with overall hydration of about 76%.  The final dough is tacky.

One Loaf:

Prep:

Starting with about 25g of storage chef, create a mature stiff levain of 100g. (About 12 hours.)

Toast the sunflower, pumpkin and sesame seeds, and cool.  Mix with the flax and cornmeal to add later.

Day of baking:

Add all ingredients except salt to bread machine bowl.  Run on dough cycle enough to mix.  Autolease 20 minutes.  Add salt, and run on dough cycle about 7 minutes.  (Because of the bran and seeds, you want to mix a tad less than usual, and do some extra folds to develop the gluten to compensate.)

Bulk Ferment: 3-4 hours @75-80F.  4 stretch and folds half way through, at about 1 1/2 hours.

Loosely Shape. Relax for 20m.  Shape into batard.

Proof 1- 2 1/2 hours.  It is a moist dough and will spread a bit.

Three diagonal slashes.  Bake at 450F for 10 minutes (with steam at 0 and 5 minutes), then reduce heat to 400F for 20 minutes, then finish at 350F for another 10 or 15 minutes until crust is dark orange.  Or bake it Hamelman style hotter and shorter.

I just saw Benjamin's pictures of his beautiful seed bread, and once again, I vowed to follow a master like Hamelman instead of winging it. But in my heart of hearts, I know it's not going to happen. At least not very frequently. I swear it's not arrogance - I just want to get to that stage when I can produce a satisfactory loaf without directions. This week, I too baked a sourdough seed bread. If you want to read about all the fumbling and the improvisation, it's on my blog http://dragonspalate.blogspot.com/2010/07/whole-wheat-with-grains-and-seeds.html.

It's a whole wheat loaf with buckwheat groats, flax seeds, sunflower seeds, and wheat berries. I love the chewiness of the wheat berries. Tasted very good. But look at the difference in oven spring between mine and Benjamin's. Or rather, the lack of it in mine. I've got steam issues that I'm trying to solve. Still, it was not a brick.