I Feel the Need, the Need for Seeds

It is Hamelman's Sourdough seeded bread and has a flax (i use golden) soaker and toasted sesame and sunflower seeds. Delicious.

Sunflower, pumpkin, sesame, millet, flax (pretty, but you get more from them nutritionally if they are milled into a meal), chia; to name a few.  You can also include whole or cracked or flaked kernels of grains like wheat, oats, rye, or barley.

You can experiment with soaking or boiling or toasting them for different flavors and textures.  As protection for my teeth, I routinely soak (at a minimum) or boil some of them, like millet or the whole/cracked/flaked grains, before incorporating them in the dough.

Paul

My favourite is a mix of cracked wheat, buckwheat, quinoa,chia seeds, linseed, sesame seeds and rolled oats which is in a hot water soaker overnight. I have also included some wholemeal flour in my sourdough version of Rose Levy Barenbaum's 10 grain torpedo (a yeasted bread recipe which is really nice too).

What else hasn't been mentioned already?   caraway, coriander, fennel, anise, nasturtium, pepper, cardamon, nutmeg, nuts are seeds too, mustard, jackfruit seeds,  coffee, a big assortment of beans, peas, lentils, cocoa nibs, corn, pine nuts or grape seed.

I was just googling this very question the other day :)

My standby is a sourdough with golden flax seed, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds and chia seeds. I can't really taste them in the bread..my reason for adding them is the vitamins/minerals. I'm always looking for ways to boost calcium and have been on the lookout for Teff flour...

I'm also interested in adding seeds to my SD. How do i account for the weight of the seeds in relation of flour?

(Do I just add whatever I like and still use the same amount of flour?)

Thanks,

Ingrid

So more than likely, hydration needs adjusting.  All the seeds are different and absorb differently.  Chia 4x weight for water, Flax 2x, etc.  Most the time it is easier just to soak the seeds for several hours, drain, and add.  The drained off liquid can also be added replacing some of the water but sometimes it can be bitter.  Taste it first, if you don't like the taste, don't use it.  

The amount of seeds used is a personal preference.  From dense fruit cake or pumpernickel to fluff with seeds.  Seeds are heavy when compared to flour and will weigh a crumb down as the percent of seeds rises against the flour amount.  They also weigh more and cost more per kilo than flour.  So price wise, we tend to limit the amount of seeds in a loaf. 

If seeds are milled into flour, they become part of the dough matrix and need to be examined with the flour for crumb effect.  Many seeds contain a fair amount of oil and often selected due to their aromatic oil content.  

Will have a play next baking round. I really want to use flax meal and pumpkin seeds (they are lurking in my freezer, waiting to be used).

I only started adding seeds to some of my loaves a few weeks ago. So far, sesame is the only type I've used both toasted and not, and I preferred the former. I'm curious what seeds other types people like to toast. It's easy enough to see sunflower and pumpkin, so I'm wondering more about other types like flax, millet, etc.

Karin (hanseata) got Lucy hooked on hemp seeds early on and she hasn't been the same since - dispute multiple interventions and rehab:-)

I think we have used every seed we can find in bread and love then all.. Some are more weird than others though.  Lucy Likes to buy stranger ones in the garden center.  She soaks the larger ones and chai.seeds, grinds some like flax and just tosses others in like hemp, basil, oregano, coriander, millet and amaranth

Now Mini Oven has Lucy sifting out the seeds from Chipotle peppers!!!It's an illness for sure:-)

Don;t forget to sprout, dry and grind them into flour too.

sound of millet when they bite into the bread.  Hemp seeds are also crunchy.  Fun to watch their faces.  :)