How to Get Soft Whole Grain Sourdough Bread

There was an earlier post about regular whole grain bread,  but I like sourdough. How do you get a whole grain sourdough loaf that isn't brick like? My husband isn't a fan of my sourdough because it is so dense and tough. Does anyone have a recipe that approaches the lightness of store bought whole grain bread? I need to ferment mine at room temperature around 8 hours as I'm gluten sensitive and have blood sugar issues and the longer ferment helps negate both issues (when I don't consume more than a couple slices a day.) I have considered adding vital gluten, and experimented a little with baking soda, but so far have not found a loaf that rises very much. My starter is mature and healthy and makes beautiful white loaves. The best I've made with whole wheat flour had eggs and milk in it to enrich the dough, but it also had 50% all purpose flour in it. Recipes or baking tips would be great!

Timing and Patience is the main issue people get a brick, real sourdough bread is not available in Thailand so I have to make it myself:

Classic like in an East Frisian farm kitchen made since centuries.

Try this one, it should work for you as well:

50g starter rye sourdough
250g rye flour type 1150
250g wheat flour type 550
380g of water
20g basinage / reserve water
30g stale bread (crumbs or finely chopped)
14g salt
1g yeast

(g=grams)

But this recipe is not the stone of wisdom on it's own:

Here is the how to it:

approx 6 days before in a clean Mason Jar 500 ml:
50 g whole grain rye
50 ml water 40 degrees celsius
(Tip a few drips of sour milk makes it starting faster)


1st sourdough 12-14 hrs before you set the main dough
50g          above starter sourdough
100g        Rye flour
100g        Water

2nd sourdough 12-14 hrs before set the main dough
30g stale bread
60ml water

Preparation:

Knead all the ingredients slowly for 10 minutes, then knead in the salt for the last 3 minutes.
Dough is relatively sticky due to high rye content;
The result here is only a conditionally elastic dough.
If the dough is still too firm, knead in up to 20g of bassinage / reserve water at the end.
Approx. 3.5 hours of fermentation at approx. 22 to 24° room temperature in a lightly oiled, covered dough pan
At 30, 60 and 90 minutes stretch and fold
After 3.5 hours work the dough lengthwise and then place it in a floured proofing basket with the end facing up.
Cover and leave the dough to continue maturing in the proof for approx. 1.5 hours.
Slight grains must appear on the surface. If so, the bread is ready to bake.
So you have to heat up your oven in time (about 1 hour before you bake)
Heat the oven to 250° for approx. 1 hour (do not forget a shallow pan for the water)
Turn the dough out of the proofing basket and cut straight down the length
(if you have a fairly strong grain, you can also try to bake without cutting)
Put the dough carefully in the oven.
Work with steam for the first 10 minutes at 250° (quickly apply approx. 50 to 70ml of water to the shallow pan and let it evaporate)
Drain off steam and turn the oven down to 200 degrees
Bake another 40 minutes
Remove and let cool on a wire rack
Ready!

If your bread is still compact and tough you need to find out the right level of added water for the steam or use another pan. The right steam is the chemistry of a fluffy bread)

Good luck!

See Hes wrote:
250g rye flour type 1150
250g wheat flour type 550
...
20g basinage / reserve water

Thank you for the recipe! What are the flour types? Does that have to do with the fineness of the grind or the moisture content? I can Google it to see if there is information about that anywhere on the internet. I may also just experiment with the rye and wheat flours I already have. What is "basinage / reserve water"? I've not heard of that before and wonder if it's something that has a different name here. I sometimes use water leftover from boiling potatoes in my bread as it seems to boost the starter a bit.

Katie - I would say that 8 hours is a short ferment for sourdough, maybe that's part of the issue. Generally I make my sourdough in a dutch oven to have a crisp crust,  but cooking it in a loaf pan should make it more suitable for sliced bread for sandwiches. To my mind the key to a good loaf is a wet, no knead style dough. Typically I start my sourdough at least 24 hours before baking. We keep a cold house so the ferment is all at our room temperature of about 58-62 degrees. Otherwise, the first 12 hours at room temperature, overnight in the fridge and then a few hours room temp before baking.

Sorry, Bassinage is a French word which Germans use also and means nothing else as.

"if your dough is too firm after the kneading steps are completed, you knead additional water in the dough for about 3 minutes"

The rye flour is Type 1150
The wheat flour is Type 550

(I don't know if these numbers are an international standard but I guess it is)

I've found whole wheat sourdough is plenty soft and fluffy if you let it sit for 24 hours and keep it really wet. Whole wheat flour absorbs moisture over that time. When I first started doing long raise times with sourdough as opposed to commercial yeast loafs, it was turning into a brick because I was making it too dry. You know how regular bread recipes say to knead flour into the bread dough until it comes cleanly away from the sides? That's not what whole wheat sourdough dough should look like.

Instead I found I needed to have it wet enough that it would stick all over my hands and the bowl. I wouldn't even knead it, just kind of fold over a few times. By the next day it would still be sticky but I could fold it into a ball. I would bake it in a cast iron pot to get a nice crunchy crust (which is what I like) but the inside would be moist and soft, with big airy holes. To soften it up for my kids, after it's baked, I've found that if you stick it in a plastic bag and let it sit for a day, the moisture inside the loaf would soften it up quite a lot too.  

(Full disclosure- I haven't made sourdough for a while but this is what I did back when I was baking bread several times a week for a few years. 😁)

My son's friend brought me sourdough rye babies from Norway about 5 years ago. I've read that local yeast will have replaced the Norwegian yeast by now, but who knows - maybe they've mutated in a mutually beneficial way.

I'd had a wheat sourdough starter before and found it troublesome, so I decided to try a different approach. I use a wide mouth 1 liter jar with heavy plastic on the top held with an elastic band. I keep it in the fridge and try to make sure I use it at least once every 2 weeks. When I get it out of the fridge, I add 1/4 cup of rye flour and 1/4 cup of our well water (read, no chlorine or chloramines to tick them off). I read that yeast can double in 3 hours or so, so if I'm in a rush, I will add another 1/4 each of rye flour and water at that point, but usually, I try to leave it most of the day before feeding it a second time.

I use the "no-knead" technique and the "stir it up and let it alone" system.

So I lightly butter a mixing bowl that will hold it through the rise and then mix in the bowl:
2 3/4 cups unbleached flour
1/4 cup wheat germ
1/4 cup rye flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp salt
(if you're in a rush you may mix in 1/4 tsp bread yeast but it's not necessary if you're going to let it rise overnight)

Then I pour 1 cup of the sourdough starter out of its bottle into my two cup measure.
I then add warm water to the measuring cup until it reaches the two cup mark and stir gently to dilute the starter.

Then I gradually add the water/starter mix into the flour mix stirring with a rubber spatula in a "folding over" sort of action. Normally, I will need at least an extra 1/4 cup extra of water, because I'm looking for "gloppy". It's hard to describe, but as Stacy Witscher said, "the key to a good loaf is a wet, no knead style dough."

Then I put a plate over the bowl to keep it moist and let it rise overnight. Normally, I'm getting approximately a 12 hour rise.

Next I put my round glazed cast-iron Dutch oven in the oven with its lid on the rack beside it, turn the oven on at 425F and set a timer for 30  min. After 30 min, I lift out the pan carefully, use a wet spatula to loosen the dough from it's bowl "pouring" if you think in terms of a slow moving ooze that needs a certain amount of pushing into the hot pan, put the hot lid on it and put it back in the oven as quickly as possible. I set the timer for another 30 min. At that time, I reduce the temperature to 350F and remove the lid. Five minutes like this will crisp up the top. If the dough was wetter, it may need a bit more, but I tap it to tell if it's done.

I tip it right out of the Dutch oven onto a cooling rack. If it doesn't slide out, that's a sign that the oven temp isn't quite right (not all ovens read the same).

This doesn't meet the "whole grain" requirement, but possibly if you start at this ratio, you might find ways to move up as time goes on. This isn't the only bread I make (I regularly make a 75% whole wheat bread in my bread machine) - it's more of a "special" day bread, but my friends will eat it and they're much fussier than my family. It was based on a recipe that used only white flour which I found boring. I've been tweaking it for years now and at least if has flavour and is popular. I've debated subbing in more rye flour, but it is lower in gluten so there's some risk there.

See Hes wrote:Sorry, Bassinage is a French word which Germans use also and means nothing else as.

"if your dough is too firm after the kneading steps are completed, you knead additional water in the dough for about 3 minutes"

The rye flour is Type 1150
The wheat flour is Type 550

(I don't know if these numbers are an international standard but I guess it is)

Thanks for the reply!

Basinage makes sense. Most of my recipes say something similar to the translation. One word is much more precise!

Here in the States we tend to be independent and not use international standards (thus my confusion!) I read a few baking websites and found that rye flour type 1150 is similar to medium or dark rye flour in the USA. Wheat flour type 550 is similar to all purpose or bread flour.