I have been tinkering with PR's Basic Sourdough Bread recipe for a while and have come up with the following recipe, which I really enjoy baking and eating:

 Five-Grain Seeded Sourdough Bread

 (based on Peter Reinhart's Basic Sourdough Bread, The Bread Baker's Apprentice)

Firm Starter

4 oz. sourdough starter

4.5 oz bread flour

1/4 cup lukewarm water

Soaker

2 to 4 oz Bob's Red Mill 5-Grain Cereal

2.2 oz unsalted sunflower seeds (optional)

2.5 oz unsalted pumpkin seeds (optional)

0.2 oz salt (omit if seeds are salted)

3/4 cup boiling water (approx.)

Dough

20.25 ounces bread flour

0.5 ounce salt

Starter

Soaker

1 ½ to 1 ¾ cups lukewarm water

 Directions

          Day 1

1. To make firm starter, remove sourdough starter from refrigerator and allow to warm up for about 1 hour. Combine starter ingredients and knead just long enough to evenly distribute flour and sourdough starter. Spray zipper seal bag lightly with oil. Place firm starter in bag and seal. Allow to double at room temperature, approximately 4 hours. Refrigerate overnight.
2. Place cereal, seeds (if using), and salt in small bowl. Add boiling water to cover. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and allow to sit at room temperature overnight.

Day 2

3. Remove starter from refrigerator 1 hour before making dough. Combine flour and salt in large mixing bowl. Add soaker and mix well. Remove starter from zipper bag, cut or tear into pieces, and add to flour mixture. Using large spoon or your hands, mix in enough water to bring dough together in a ball.
4. Allow dough to autolyse for 30-40 minutes. Turn dough out onto lightly floured surface and knead for 13-16 minutes, until dough passes the windowpane test. Dough should be firm but tacky, like French bread dough. Lightly oil a large bowl. Place dough in bowl, roll to coat with oil, and cover bowl with plastic wrap.
5. Ferment dough at room temperature for 3 to 4 hours or until it nearly doubles. Gently divide dough into two pieces and shape as desired. Mist dough with spray oil, cover loosely with plastic wrap or floured towel, and place in refrigerator.

Day 3

6. Remove loaves from refrigerator 3 to 4 hours before you plan to bake them. Make sure not to overproof. When the imprint of a finger poked gently into dough springs back slowly, the dough is ready to bake.
7. Preheat oven to 500 degrees F for 45 minutes to 1 hour with baking stone and steam pan in place. Slash loaves and transfer carefully to baking stone. Immediately pour 3/4 cup hot water into steam pan. Close oven and lower temperature to 450 degrees F. Bake for 10 minutes, then rotate loaves to ensure even baking. Continue to bake for 10 to 20 minutes, until the loaves register 200 to 205 degrees F in the center.
8. Cool for 45 minutes before slicing.

 Note: If you want to make the bread in 2 days instead of 3, after dividing, shaping, and misting the dough in step 5, cover the loaves and allow to proof at room temperature for 2 to 3 hours, then bake as directed.

My daughter’s birthday is this week and as she loves hearty, artisan breads, I decided to bake Jeffrey Hamelman’s sourdough seed bread instead of a cake.  

I used King Arthur bread flour and Arrowhead Organic rye.  The seeds were purchased from an organic food coop.  The recipe was tweaked a bit.

Day one (of three): Assemble the liquid levain, soak the flax seeds, and toast the sunflower and sesame seeds:  

Liquid levain: 
4.8 oz. bread flour
6 oz. water
1 oz. mature culture

The recipe calls for a liquid culture.  I opted to try one ounce of my stiff sourdough culture straight from the refrigerator [it had been refreshed the day before] as an experiment.

Mix the levain and allow it to stand (covered, at 70F) for 12 to 16 hours.  The photo shows my levain about two hours after it had been mixed.

Flax seed soaker:   
2.2 oz. flax seeds
6.7 oz. cold water

After you’ve mixed the levain, place 2.2 oz. flax seeds in a container and gently add  6.7 oz. cold water.  Cover and let stand for 12 to 16 hours.   As the flax seeds absorb the water, the mixture will appear gelatinous.

Toast the sunflower and sesame seeds:
3.8 oz. sunflower seeds (shelled)
1.9 oz sesame seeds

The sunflower seeds were toasted on a cookie sheet in a 325F oven for about 20 minutes (stirred occasionally) until browned.  The sesame seeds were browned in a cast iron pan over direct flame.  Stir constantly or they’ll pop out of the pan all over your stove top.

The toasted  seeds were mixed together (smelling oh, so heavenly), moved to a glass bowl, then covered and allowed to rest overnight so the nutty flavors could meld.  

Day two:  Mixing, fermentation, shape, and retard:
1 lb. 8.6 oz. bread flour
2.6 oz whole rye flour
11.3 oz. water.  
.7 oz salt (1 T plus ½ tsp)
All (8.9 oz) of the flax seed soaker
All (5.7 oz) of the toasted sunflower and sesame seeds
10.8 oz. liquid levain (all of the liquid levain except for 2T [1 oz]) (I added all 10.9 oz.)

The desired dough temperature is 76F (see note at the end of this text).

All of the ingredients were added to my KA spiral mixer.  Hamelman instructs to mix at first speed for three minutes, then at second speed for another three minutes.  I think Bread was written primarily for professional bakers and that those mixing instructions are for a heavy duty commercial mixer, so I don’t follow them.

I used the first speed only long enough to make sure the levain, water, salt, flour, and seeds were well mixed, then let the dough autolyse for 20 minutes.  After the autolyse, the dough was moved to my counter top where I stretched and folded until it felt supple.

Bulk fermentation is 2.5 hours.  The dough next was placed in a bowl for the bulk fermentation.  I folded it twice at 50-minute intervals.

I retarded the bread on a full sheet of parchment placed on a three-sided cookie sheet.  These three loaves were placed in a large food-grade plastic bag and moved to the refrigerator. The recipe calls for two large loaves, but I prefer three smaller loaves.

Final fermentation: The final fermentation can be up to 18 hours at 42F.

Day three: Bake and cool.

These loaves rose nicely during the final fermentation and even while unbaked, the perfume of the toasted seeds was quite wonderful.

The retarded breads had about an hour’s warm-up time while the oven was preheated to 460F.  They were scored and moved to the hot oven stone, then half a cup of hot water was dumped in the broiler pan under the stone.  Total bake time was 45 minutes.

The fragrance of the cooling bread was awesome.

I’ll give myself a “D” for scoring, but at least it’s a small improvement.

I waited 24 hours before slicing the bread, to allow the flavors to combine and mature.  The mix of the sunflower, flax, and sesame seeds, combined with the caramelized crust, provides a burst of flavor that borders on smokiness.  I loved the taste, fragrance, and texture of this bread.

A different take on crumb:  The kids and grandkids claim that too many holes means there’s too little bread, so they call it diet bread.  This should make them all happy.

If you enjoy an aromatic hearty bread, I’d encourage you to try Hamelman’s SD seed bread.  It's delicious toasted for breakfast, or with a bit of unsalted butter with a salad.  Or even plain!

Now, about desired dough temperature.  If you have Hamelman’s Bread, you’ll have read pages 382-385.  If you’re not familiar with the term, it is a formula used to determine the correct temperature of the water to be added to your flour and other ingredients.  It makes a difference in the quality of your bread.

Rather than reinventing the wheel, I direct you to WildYeast's blog where she so masterfully covers the subject and even provides a free downloadable calculator.  (Thank you, Susan!).

My wife recently picked up a copy of Leader's Local Breads, and I am part way through reading it.  I needed to bake this weekend, so thought that I would try a formula from the book.  Based on what I had available, I opted for the Pain au Levain, using my existing sourdough starter to prepare the levain for the formula.  I also chose to add sunflower seeds to the bread, following one of Mr. Leader's options.

It was enjoyable to work with a mostly-white bread dough again.  Much of my recent baking has been predominantly whole-grain breads (not counting RLB's focaccia that factored out at 113% hydration!), which tend to have somewhat heavier and stickier doughs.  This formula calls for small quantities of both whole wheat and rye flours, but they are fairly low percentages of the total flour content.

Here's the finished bread:

And a shot of the crumb:

As you can see, there was plenty of oven-spring.  The dough was a little bit short of being completely proofed.  I may have been able to let it proof a little longer than I did, but I'm happy with the outcome.  The flavor is surprisingly (to me) mild; the wheat flavor comes through cleanly, along with the nutty sweetness of the sunflower seeds.  The last couple of sourdoughs that I have made had a high whole wheat content and a pronounced sourdough tang.  Other conditions were essentially the same, so it appears that the flour has an influence on the degree of sourness.

This is a very enjoyable bread.  I hope that others in the book are equally good.

Paul