I have multigrain English muffins with toasted sunflower seeds proofing right now.  I saw the sourdough English muffin recipe on TFL and decided I had to try some.  I much prefer whole grain breads so these have some unbleached but mostly multigrain flours, my San Francisco sourdough starter and since we love crunches I added the sunflower seeds.  I cannot wait to see how they turn out after they finish proofing and I have heated up the griddle.  Here is a picture of them proofing:

I will add pictures of the finished product later today.  Melody in Santa Fe

I plan to start Hamelman’s five grain sourdough rye tonight, now that my KAF order arrived and I have high gluten flour.

While the recipe doesn’t call for it, have any of you who have  baked this bread toasted the sunflower seeds before making the soaker?  

Any reason not to?

This morning I proofed and baked  Jeffery Hamelman's "Sourdough Seed Bread" from his book, "Bread." This is basically a pain au levain with toasted seseme and sunflower seeds and a soaker of flax seeds. Hamelman is clear that this bread's flavor benefits from slow fermentation. You can spike the dough with commercial yeast, but it's better not to. You can bake it the day it's mixed, but it's better to let it cold-retard. I went for all the flavor I could get, and I got it in abundance!

So today i started a double batch variant of a multigrain hearth bread in the PR delayed fermentation/epoxy style. I decided to add 12ozs of cooked brown rice, quinoa, and amaranth grains for extra protein; i've also found that the quinoa sometimes gives a pleasant little *pop* if you happen to catch a grain between your teeth while eating the bread. It's "retarding" now; meaning I got lazy, and didn't want to bake it tonight so i left the bowl in the cold basement to do its thing.

I made Daniel Leader's Pain au Levain for the first time today. I added 3/4 cups of sunflower seeds to the dough, but I did not soak them as he recommended. Also, I brushed the batards with water while they were proofing and gently pressed more seeds to the tops. 

The oven spring and bloom were beyond my (modest) expectations. The bread was pretty yummy, too.

Photos to follow ...

David