Multigrain Sourdough Sandwich Bread for the Babes

Karen of Karen's Kitchen Stories, our awesome Kitchen of the Month challenged us to make a sandwich loaf with multigrains AND sourdough. Since my sourdough starter was abandoned when Sweetie started losing weight, I had to begin another one, but it was worth it because this was an absolutely wonderful bread. It makes especially good toast! Just follow the recipe...and allow a few days to make the starter before you begin the actual bread dough. I did add 1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast to the bread flour because this is a hearty bread with the grains and my sourdough was still pretty young when I baked.

If you bake this bread and would like to be a Buddy, take a photo and send an email to Karen (email address on her blog) with the photo and a short description of your bake and your URL. She'll send the lovely Buddy Badge that the very talented Elizabeth made.

Be sure to check out the other Bread Baking Babes blogs to see the creative ways they have come up with to make this recipe personal for themselves. I only took one photo. Thought I had taken others, but now the bread is gone...will have to make more!!

Happy baking!

If you don't have a sourdough starter, start with a 50/50 by weight mixture of water and flour and a pinch of yeast and let it ferment for 12 to 24 hours. This may affect the timing.

The sourdough starter in this bread is 100 percent hydration.

Suggested timeline (plus or minus depending on the weather):

Day one:
Feed your starter and let it sit, covered, at room temperature for 12 to 24 hours.
Day two:
8 a.m. mix your dough and let it rise.
4 p.m. Shape the dough and let it rise
5 or 6 p.m. bake your loaf.

Alternative timeline (plus or minus depending on the weather):
Day one:
Feed your starter and let it sit, covered, at room temperature for 12 to 24 hours.
Day two:
8 p.m. mix your dough and let it rise
6 a.m. shape the dough and let it rise
7 or 8 a.m. bake your loaf.

This bread is very flavorful and an easy way to incorporate sourdough.

Here's the recipe:

Multigrain Sourdough Sandwich Bread

by Karen Kerr   Makes 1 loaf

INGREDIENTS

For the Dough

• 50 grams (1/4 cup) bubbly 100% hydration sourdough starter
• 300 grams (1 1/4 cups) warm water
• 20 grams (1 tablespoon) honey
• 45 grams (3 tablespoons) melted coconut oil
• 50 grams (1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon) whole wheat flour
• 450 grams (3 3/4 cups) bread flour
• 9 grams (1 1/2 teaspoons) fine sea salt

For the Multigrain Soaker

• 70 grams (1/2 cup) King Arthur Flour Harvest Grains Blend or Bob's Red Mill 10 Grain Cereal, or another mixture of grains and seeds
• 240 grams (1 cup) hot water
• Rolled oats for topping the loaf (optional)
•  

INSTRUCTIONS

1. In a large bowl, mix the starter, water, honey, and oil with a dough whisk or fork. Add the flours and salt. 
2. Mix the dough by hand in the bowl to form a shaggy dough. Cover with a damp towel or plastic wrap and let rest for 30 minutes. 
3. While the dough is resting, mix the multigrains and hot water in a separate bowl and let rest. Drain thoroughly before using. 
4. Add the multigrains to the dough and knead to incorporate. The dough will be pretty wet at first but will begin to come together. Don't add more flour. 
5. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a damp towel and let rise until doubled, about 6 to 8 hours. 
6. Place the dough onto a lightly oiled surface and press it out to a rectangle. Roll the dough into a log and place it into an oiled 9 inch by 5 inch loaf pan, seam side down. Cover loosely with oiled plastic wrap and let rest until the dough has crested one inch above the rim of the pan, 1 to 2 hours. 
7. Heat your oven to 450 degrees F. 
8. If you want to top the bread with rolled oats, brush the loaf with water and press in some oats. 
9. Place the loaf on the center rack and reduce the temperature to 400 degrees F. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes, until it reaches an internal temperature of 190 to 195 degrees F. Cool in the pan for 10 minutes and then turn it out to a wire rack to cool completely. 

Karen's Kitchen Stories

Baking Center Experiment #3 - Gluten Free Sandwich Loaf

Well over a dozen days without gluten, dairy (except for yogurt), caffeine, seeds and nuts (except for almond flour and peanut butter), alcohol, red meat and all the foods eliminated a couple of years ago due to need to reduce oxalate intake...and yes, there are still plenty of things to eat...and I am feeling much better, with more energy and the 'plumbing' is working close to normal. To this point I have used a purchased GF sandwich loaf when I wanted a slice of bread, but it is pretty much like cardboard in texture. I went online and did some research and combined a few recipes trying to create one that has elasticity as well as a nice crumb and crust. Hoping that it tastes good, too.

I thought a bit about what makes artisan bread taste so good and one thing is the flavor you can get if you let the dough or a poolish or starter sit for a day or two in the fridge, so I decided to ignore the recipes I had seen that did it all on one day, to allow for that. I used a cup of water and put that in a small bowl along with the yeast. Once it had proved, I stirred in a cup of a brown rice flour mixture that was similar to ones I had seen online. It sat on the counter for about an hour and I could see that it was active, so I punched it down a bit and covered it in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for a little over 24 hours. Once it came back to room temperature I continued on with my recipe, adding another cup of water and the starter after I had mixed some honey, eggs, butter and vinegar together. After the starter had incorporated, I put in the rest of the flour mixture which I had enriched with xanthan gum for stability and an egg replacer for elasticity. I beat the batter even though there isn't really gluten to develop, but a lot of recipes seem to do that.

I put all the batter into one big bread pan so that the slices would be big enough for sandwiches. It did dip in the middle as it cooled after baking as it seems these GF breads often do, but not a lot and the slices are nice and large and the crust is great! Once the loaf had risen and was ready to bake I sprinkled a little GF flour mixture at random on the top for an artisan look.

I had a half slice plain once it had cooled off and was happy with the texture and mostly happy with the flavor, but there was a sort of metallic aftertaste that I don't care for. More experiments may be needed to figure out how to get rid of that. It wasn't too noticeable the next day, so maybe I can keep using this recipe as is. It makes great toast, too. Overall it is a much nicer bread than the stuff from the grocery store. Future loaves will probably include GF oats, mashed real potatoes, potato water, and buckwheat and/or spelt flour for more flavor.

By the way, the bread wasn't ready until quite late because Sweetie, Pi and I went to the beach for lunch and the afternoon because it was so beautiful and we wanted some fun time together. A happy day was enjoyed by all. I'm glad we went because it turned hot a couple of days later and smoky and very hot (100+) over the weekend and today. Glad it is supposed to cool off tonight and be only in the mid-80s tomorrow.

GF Sandwich Bread

1 1/2 cups brown rice flour
1 1/2 cups tapioca flour
1 1/2 cups cornstarch
3 tablespoons potato flour (not potato starch)
2 /14 teaspoons (1 package) dry yeast
1 cup warm water (tepid)
1 tablespoon xanthan gum
1 tablespoon egg replacer
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup powdered milk
2 teaspoons cider vinegar
1/3 cup honey
3 large eggs, room temperature
1/4 cup non-dairy butter (like Earth Balance), room temperature
1 cup warm water (tepid)

In a large bowl whisk together the brown rice flour, tapioca flour, cornstarch, and potato flour. Remove 1 cup of this mixture and set the rest aside, covered with plastic wrap.

In a small bowl mix together the warm water and dry yeast. Let sit 10 minutes to prove the yeast...it will be foamy if yeast is viable. Stir in the cup of flour mixture. Spray one side of a piece of plastic wrap with spray oil (pan spray) and place oil side down over the bowl of dough. Let sit on counter 1 hour, then place in refrigerator (punching down a little first if dough has risen a lot) until the next day. This give the dough additional flavor over bread made the same day as it is started.

The next day let the bowl of dough come to room temperature. While it is doing that, mix the xanthan gum and egg replacer , salt and powdered milk into the flour mixture. Set aside.

In a stand mixer bowl whisk together the honey and vinegar. Beat in the eggs and then the soft butter with the paddle attachment for 30 seconds. If the butter looks a little chunky, that's O.K. Add the warm water and beat 15 seconds. Add the room temperature dough and beat 30 seconds. Add the dry ingredients and beat just until blended. Scrape down bowl, let rest 30 seconds and blend on medium-high for 4 minutes. Dough should look like thick cake batter.

While dough does final mixing, grease a bread pan. After the 4 minutes are up, spoon the dough into the prepared pan. With a wet finger smooth the top. Set in a warm draft free place to rise for 50-60 minutes and while that is happening, preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

When the dough is about 1 inch over the top of the pan, bake on the middle rack of preheated oven for 45-55 minutes to an internal temperature of 200 degrees F. An instant read thermometer really helps here.

Cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Remove from the pan and cool completely. Once totally cool, slice with a saw motion, back and forth but with no downward pressure with a serrated knife.

Makes one full size loaf or two smaller loaves. (Smaller loaves may need less baking time.)

Fresh from the Garden - Cucumber Fun

After all those months of planting, watering, fertilizing, weeding and similar garden tasks, harvest time has finally arrived. We have been harvesting zucchini for a while and did have some green beans, too, but now we have lots of zucchini plus two kinds of cucumbers, butternut squash, more beans, and....the first tomato.

One kind of cucumber I planted is new to me...long cucumbers. They look just like those expensive hothouse cucumbers that have few if any seeds. Given how much they charge at the market for them I figured that they were hard to grow or only would produce a few. Wrong.

They are growing even better than the regular cucumbers and each vine is happily producing more than half dozen of them. With so many gorgeous cucumbers to have fun with I decided to make a couple of recipes.

For lunch yesterday I had a very proper cup of tea and cucumber sandwich. I had some homemade sourdough bread which I sliced fairly thinly. I removed the crusts, spread the slices with butter, thinly, and then layered on thinly sliced long cucumbers. They went really well with the Earl Gray tea and I really enjoyed the crunchy mild cucumbers which contrasted nicely with the bread and butter.

For dinner tonight I made a salad which included chunks of both long and regular cucumbers, a couple of tomatoes cut in chunks, half a sweet white onion, diced small, a ripe avocado, peeled, seeded and diced small, and a nice balsamic/ red wine vinaigrette with oregano and herbes de provence.

After the salad marinated for an hour, I topped it with about 1/2 cup feta cheese crumbles for the perfect chilled salad to go with barbecued chicken and fresh corn on the cob.

Summer bounty is so appreciated.

Bread and Memories

Happy Easter to those who celebrate Easter and Happy Spring to those who celebrate the mid-point between the shortest day and longest day of the year. This is actually a bit toward the longest, but you would never know it from our weather. Chilly nights, rainy days and, as a result, tulips that last and last isn't so bad, really. The apple blossoms are getting ready to bloom but have been discouraged by unseasonal cool.

One of the nice things about cooler weather is that my interest in bread baking has revived. There is something that is emotionally warming about the smell of freshly baked yeast breads.That slice of toast with marmalade goes so well with a warming cup of tea or coffee, too.

The last couple of days I've been baking or talking about baking with other bread bakers including J of the Green Thumb and Sparkle Plenty. One of the things that has come up is that my Dad used to bake loaves of bread for sandwiches. I forget if this happened a long time before he retired or shortly before, but I remember how much better I liked sandwiches made with his bread. Since we were a large family, he would bake at least four loaves on a weekend afternoon, ready for school lunches.

After he retired and I had moved to California he and I discussed bread baking because i was learning the mysteries of yeast and kneading. One of my favorite artisan breads was Struan bread, a complex loaf with mixed grains and a hearty taste. When I found a book by Brother Juniper (who used to have a cafe and bakery in nearby Forestville, although that was before I lived in the North Bay area) that had the recipe. I sent it to my Dad and he tried it. I think it was a little "crunchy granola" for him. When you consider that his simple white bread loaves were the best white bread you could have, I can't blame him for going with white and whole wheat fine flour breads. I think he made rye bread, too, probably 'deli rye'. I often think of him when I make loaves of bread, especially bread I plan to use for sandwiches.

This past week I wanted some sandwich bread for our house, so I took a recipe that included seeds and nuts and simplified it down. I used white bread flour, whole wheat flour and the 12 grain blend from King Arthur, but they are all fine flours, so the bread was a nice simple loaf with a great crunchy crust, moist fine crumb and delicious flavor.

It made great toast as well as being perfect for sandwiches. If you don't have a sourdough starter, just soften a package of yeast (about 2 teaspoons) in 1/4 cup warm (about 115 degrees F) for 10 minutes. Use that plus 3/4 cup warm water in place of the sourdough starter. It changes the flavor of the bread and usually rises a bit faster, but you will have a yummy loaf of sandwich bread. You can double the recipe for two loaves.

Sourdough Sandwich Loaf
Makes one loaf

2 cups all purpose unbleached flour
1 cup 12 - grain flour (or use additional wheat flour)
1 cup whole wheat bread flour
1 cup sourdough starter
1 1/2 cups lukewarm (70 degree F) water
1 tablespoon salt

In a large bowl mix the all purpose flour, 12 grain flour, and whole wheat flour together to combine. (I used a whisk to whisk them until combined.)
Put the starter, water and 1 cup flour mixture in the bowl of a stand mixer and whisk to make a smooth batter. Use the paddle or dough hook with mixer on a low speed to work in additional 1 1/2 cups flour mixture. If not using dough hook, change to dough hook at this point. Add rest of the flour mixture to the dough, 1/2 cup at a time with the mixer on a low speed. Let the mixer knead the dough for about 5 minutes, or until dough is elastic, or turn the dough out onto a floured board and knead in the rest of the flour then knead for 5 minutes until the dough is elastic.

Lightly coat a 4-quart mixing bowl with oil and transfer the dough to the oiled bowl. Turn the dough over layer of plastic wrap and allow the dough to rise at room temperature, until it has doubled in bulk, at least 8 hours, preferably overnight.

Press the air out of the risen dough and gently knead it until it is springy again.

Shape the dough into a loaf. My method is to press the dough into a rough rectangle, roll it up like a jelly roll, tuck the ends under and then put into a prepared bread pan with the tucked ends on the bottom.

Loosely cover the loaf with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled in size, about 4 hours.
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Bake until well browned and sound hollow when tapped, about 35 minutes. An instant read thermometer inserted into the center of a loaf will register 200 degrees F.

Transfer the baked loaf to a cooling rack and let cool 5 minutes, then turn loaf out of bread pan. Let cool to room temperature before slicing.