After all those years, who would have thought, but I ♥ you whole wheat!
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Do you need a bit of encouragement to start making a super healthy whole wheat loaf? Awful childhood memories like me of stale and even rancid bread? Get out and buy the best fresh! organic whole wheat you can find and give this loaf a chance! It is nothing like your memories, it is about 1000 times better, or frankly incomparable, with an intense flavor that is the opposite of bland. Close your eyes and you can see the wheat fields gently swaying in the wind.
This recipe is not highly original of course, there are many whole wheat levain recipes and they are all more or less the same. But it is a great loaf to have in your bread repertoire. This is our version of it and the recipe contains the exact details on how we create our loaf. People have told us (and we believe them) that they really work for them so here it is.
We started out by making a 55% whole wheat loaf. Gradually we started making more of this 65% loaf, the one described in this recipe, and people just love it. You can compare the two versions by looking at the first (65%) and second (55%) gallery of pictures below. The thing we love most about the recipe is you end up with a bread still very much crusty and creamy crumb, with a complex, sweet taste, while having this high percentage of whole wheat goodness in it.
For this recipe we are going to make a starter named a poolish. A poolish is a type of wet sponge usually made with an equal weight of water and flour and a small amount of sourdough starter culture or yeast and NO salt. Making a poolish helps bring more taste and strength to your bread.
We use a sourdough culture which is made with 100% whole grain rye flour. A sourdough culture based on rye flour is easier to maintain, does not go into a slurry when you forget about it, is easier to stir because it has almost no gluten and smells very nice, a bit like fruit. It is also very forgiving in the amount you feed it, everything seems to be alright. Normally we only feed it once a week, after our weekend baking we give it a few table spoons of water and rye flour, stir, ready!
Making the poolish
In a bowl stir together the 65 g whole wheat flour, 65 grams of water at room temperature with 15 grams of sourdough culture. Mix it well until you have a homogeneous slurry that looks like very thick batter. Cover the bowl with clingfilm and let the prefermenting begin. After 12 hours at room temperature it should be bubbly, light and ready for use. So if you want to begin your bread making in the morning, you should make your poolish at 9 in the evening.
| Ingredients for the poolish | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 65 | g | whole wheat (bread) flour | ||
| 65 | g | water (room temperature) | ||
| 15 | g | sourdough culture | ||
| Ingredients for the whole wheat loaf | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| makes 1 loaf | ||||
| the poolish from step 1 | ||||
| 225 | g | whole wheat (bread) flour | ||
| 160 | g | wheat (bread) flour | ||
| 250 | g | water | ||
| 7 | g | (sea) salt | ||
Making the loaf
Put the poolish starter, flour and salt in the mixing bowl of your standing mixer and add 2/3 of the water. Now start mixing and gradually add the rest of the water and let the dough come together. We use European flour which absorbs a few % less water than American type flour. People using American type of flour should add 5-15 ml water to the final dough. Knead for 6 minutes, leave it in your mixing bowl, cover with clingfilm and rest for 50 minutes. The dough should feel a bit wet and even a little bit sloppy or tacky, there should be moderate gluten development.
Ideally the temperature of your dough after mixing should be around 24-25 ºC / 75ºF. You should adjust the temperature of the water you add, so the total dough reaches this temperature. For us this means in summer adding cold water to this recipe and in winter (when our little bakery gets much colder then the rest of our house) adding water up to 50ºC /122 F. You can measure the temperature of water and dough with a food thermometer. These measurements are important because they correspond with the proving times in the recipe.
After the first rest take the dough out of the bowl and onto a floured work surface and do one stretch and fold (a full letter fold, left over right, right over left, bottom over top, top over bottom; watch our bread movie to observe this technique if you are not familiar with it). Transfer to the bowl, cover and again leave to rest for 50 minutes. Repeat the stretch and fold (full letter fold) one more time (so 2 times in total) and again leave to rest for 50 minutes. During each stretch and fold the dough should feel firmer and less wet.
Now it’s time to shape. Shaping is a tricky subject. It’s something for which everybody develops his or her own technique over time. You can make a batard or loaf shape or a boule (ball). If necessary you can learn more on shaping from a good bread book, like the ones by Hamelman or Reinhart, or the Tartine Bread book. You can also check out our video on how to shape a boule.
Preheat your oven to 230 ºC / 445 ºF (at what stage you preheat your oven depends on how long it takes for your oven to heat through, some take 30 minutes, some, like ours, with stone floors take a lot longer, up to two hours.
Transfer the shaped dough in a proofing basket or baking pan, cover and leave to proof for 2 hours and 15 minutes (provided your dough has a temperature of around 24-25 ºC / 75ºF). When you think it has risen enough, use your finger to carefully make a very small dent in the dough. If the dent remains, the bread is ready to bake, if the indentation totally disappears, the dough needs a little bit more time.
Now your loaf is ready for the oven. Slash the top of the loaf with a lame or bread scoring knife. To get a nice crust, try to create some steam in your oven by putting a small metal baking tray on your oven floor when you preheat the oven, and pour in half a cup of hot water immediately after putting the bread in the oven. Release some steam by setting your oven door ajar (perhaps with the help of a wooden spoon or oven mitt) 5 minutes before the bread is ready. If you are going to create steam with a baking tray, you maybe also want to turn your oven temperature a bit higher, because you are going to lose some heat in the process.
After 48 minutes of baking your loaf should be ready. Transfer onto a rack and leave to cool. This loaf also keeps very well in the freezer. But please make sure to eat at least some of it while fresh!
Whole wheat levain time table
day 1 21.00 h Make starter let ferment for 12 hours at room temperature
day 2 0.900 h Make final dough
- Starter + all other ingredients 6 minute mixing
- 50 minutes rest
- Stretch and fold nr. 1
- 50 minutes rest
- Stretch and fold nr. 2
- 50 minutes rest
- Shape
- final proofing 2 hours and 15 minutes
- bake for 48 minutes at 230ºC / 445ºF
PS: A lot of people still believe the a whole wheat loaf should be very dark in color. The darker the bread, the healthier. This is a big misconception. These factory breads are filled with burned malt to give them that ‘healthy’ dark appearance. Don’t let them fool you…Just buy the best fresh flour you can find, take your time to make a good loaf and you’ll never look back!
PPS:Like with all the recipes you find on our website, this one was tried and tested by us at least 8 to 10 times before we published it.
Michael says
Oops,
I se you already answered that one!
Michael
Weekend Bakers says
Glad you found the answer a few comments below we guess 🙂
Enjoy your baking weekend!
Ed & Marieke
Michael says
Greetings,
I have made many of your recipes with great success and they are on my “go to” list for weekly baking. These days I no longer keep a starter because I am just plain negligent in caring for them. Can I make this wheat levain (or any) loaf by substituting a small amount of yeast in the poolish for a different starter? If so, is there a way to calculate the amount needed.
Thanks,
Michael
Mimi says
Hi Weekendbakery,
I made a sourdough following this recipe and the ovenspring was like volcano eruption! 😅😅😅
I guess it is a good thing though. I haven’t cut it yet cause it was still hot and I have a meeting. It sounded hollow when I tapped it though😁
Thank you for sharing this recipe. This recipe definitely is a keeper.
Wish I can show you the picture here😁
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Mimi,
Hope you enjoyed the eating after the fun you had with the baking part!
Thank you and if you want you can share your pictures here:
www.weekendbakery.com/send-…your-loaf/
Always love to see them!
Greetings,
Marieke & Ed
Anna Gerard says
Hi! It’s me again 🙂 I was wondering if you could extend the time between stretch and folds longer. An hour and a half or up to two hours? I am trying to adjust the recipes to have the final dough “soured” for 7 hours for improved health/better digestion.
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Anna,
A recipe has a certain balance between ingredients, time and method and that is what makes it work. So if you change one thing, you need to keep an eye on other things. In this case, because we are talking about sourdough, you do have some room to stretch the times between s&f’s, but we would advice you to keep an eye on the development of the dough, start with 1.5 hours at most and see if the final proofing needs to be shortened.
Good luck with it!
Anna says
Yes..my loaves were definitely over proofed. Will try again. Thank you!
Ese says
For the poolish, how much (mg) yeast should I add if I don’t want to use sourdough starter? Thank you
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Ese,
If you use instant dry yeast you must add a very, very tiny amount of it to the mixture of 65 g flour and 65 g water. In fact you cannot weigh it without a precision scale. It’s about one tenth of a gram (yes it is really!) So, if you have a quarter teaspoon, you can fill a quart of it with yeast and that is about the amount we are talking about. More important even, looking at the rest of the procedure of this recipe, are the resting times and final proofing. Because times are based on the use of sourdough, you see longer periods for the development of the dough. Yeast will act faster, so an indication for the rests will be closer to 30 minutes, final proof between 45 minutes and 1.5 hours, all depending on the temperature of the dough and room of course. We have not made this exact recipe this way, so you have to experiment a bit to get it right.
Ömer Seyfi Salur says
After reading other bakers problemsIunderstood my mistake. I switched my bread flour to enincore flour so that is why it comes out like a brick.
Weekend Bakers says
Hello mr. Salur,
Yes the choice of flour (like Einkorn) makes a big difference for the end result. We can ensure you that if you stick to the flour types and proportions in the recipe, it will be much more like our result in the pictures.
Enjoy your baking in Turkey!
Ömer Seyfi Salur says
I am trying according to your time schedule and recepie but my breads are like brick they do not have wholes like yours why?
Hans van Splunter says
Hello bakers,
Love this bread. It’s our favorite.
Question: would it benefit from half an hour of autolyse?
Or is it going to be overdevelopped?
Hans
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Hans,
Thank you very much! Of course you can introduce autolyse for this recipe. We want to show different recipes with different methods, all with good results, but that doesn’t mean you cannot take any other route. When using the autolyse method, we would also reduce the kneading by one or two minutes.
Hope it will be great too!
Marieke & Ed
Noa says
Hello,
Wonderful site! I’ve made a beautiful starter thanks to your tutorial.
I would like to bake breads, using as much whole grain flour as possible. We don’t mind heavy breads 🙂
Any guide line I can work by? Flour-water ratio, proofing time, number of stretch & folds? anything?
I’ve done 2 unsuccesful bakes (although the second was much better than the first) and for the third try, I’m going to do exactly what you write in this recipe and hope for the best.
All my breads so far, cracked at the bottom. I read it may be under proofing or temperature differences of the baking dish (I don’t have a closed baking dish so I’m working with boiling water to create steam).
Any way to combat these cracks?
One last question, if I knead by hand, for how long to do so?
Thank you!
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Noa,
Thank you for your kind comment. Have you tried the recipe as described? It already has 65% whole wheat flour, which is a quite high percentage and you can stick to the instructions. If this goes well we would suggest going a bit further to 75% or over. Indeed the bread will get heavier and less airy as you go up. Because this is already a high hydration loaf, it will not need much changing, maybe a few % more water (also depending on how your specific whole grain is reacting, because they are all different, practice will teach you this). The S&F can also be done the same way. See how the dough reacts and if it can take an extra set of S&F in round one or 2 to build up the dough. We like the combination 65 whole / 35 wheat flour because of the structure of the crumb. We do not like the 100% whole wheat as much because of the heavier and compact result.
If your bread cracks at the bottom or side, try and score it deeper on the top, because it will crack at the ‘weakest’ spot, so make sure to slash the tops well and make longer slashes from side to side.
Kneading by hand will take around 12 to 15 minutes, depending on the technique, you do not need ‘window pane’ just moderate gluten development at this stage, because time and the S&F will develop the dough further.
Good luck and happy sourdough baking!
Margaret Duncan says
I love this recipe (thank you) and have been making it for a while and mostly get a good, delicious loaf. I use Defiance baker’s flour. However, I struggle with the final proofing time once the dough is in the banneton. The dough seems to be too soft and after an hour and a half, the dough is over proved and collapses once in the oven never to recover. I live in Brisbane Australia and have more trouble in summer. Could high humidity be the problem?
Weekend Bakers says
First; It is probably a difference in room temperature and/or in sourdough. Trust your instincts by reducing the time to proof to your environment. When the bread is proofed, it is proofed regarding what our recipe says. You can reduce the amount of sourdough or you can use colder water to stretch the proofing times. Second; Also when the dough is really too soft you can play with reducing the amount of water. Different brands of flour need different amounts of water.
Joseph Chiha says
Hello
I love your site and your recipes.
How easy is it to do a long proofing in the fridge to obtain more depth of flavour or is that a myth?? I find it difficult sometimes to be home the hours needed to bake and thought I’d get a lot of the prep done the night before and then the final proofing on the day of baking. Look forward to your input.
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Joseph,
No it is not a myth. One important aspect of retarding is it slows down the yeast activity and lets the bacteria dominate and produce more sour acids. So longer proofing times in the fridge will very probably mean your loaf gets more sour notes.
So yes, you can do the final proofing overnight in the fridge and bake the next morning. It will be a bit of a trial and error to get the process and times right. It is dependent on the temperature of your fridge and the amount of culture used in the recipe and the hours in the fridge (factors you can all adjust to your needs).
So one possibility is to try this during the weekend and do the retarding during the day, so you can check development.
Hope it will work out!
Joseph Chiha says
Thank you!
Can I shape the dough and put it in the fridge and bake it directly from the fridge? Or should I put it in the fridge after the 3 stretch and folds before I shape it and do the final proofing when it’s on the bench top? What are your experiences?
Weekend Bakers says
We would prefer and suggest to start with the first option. And if the bread has proofed well enough in the fridge you can indeed bake it directly – from fridge to oven. In our experience (we do not do this a lot because of lack of fridge space and too many loaves), that is to say what works best for us, is to take the loaf from the fridge, check its progress of course, and give it some time at room temperature and then bake it. But like we said it all depends on how things come together with amounts, temperatures and time. You just have to start and very probably make small adjustments to get it right.
Tammy Burke says
I just purchased a stoneware bakers cloche. How can i adapt the baking part using the cloche?
Weekend Bakers says
You preheat the oven with the cloche inside and when warm you place the dough in the cloche and then back in the oven. Careful with the hot cloche!
Arjan Gerritsen says
Just made this bread, LOVE IT!!!
Maybe a bit impatient with the final proofing, but the Bread was amazing.
Weekend Bakers says
Thanks Arjan, for trying and liking the recipe. The second bake will only get better with a little extra proofing time.
Enjoy the baking and eating!
Emily says
Hi Ed & Marieke,
I just want to thank you for having this blog and detailed posts . I love to cook and make my own food from scratch but i never could bake. I know this post is old but i was looking at making my own sourdough starter and bread and i think your blog is the best so far. i only incorporated some other tips and consolidate and test it out. My starter was 6 days old before i started to use it, it might have been a bit weak since some days i only feed it after 30hrs because its winter here and temp outside is sometimes 9 degrees C. i do try to put it near the radiator to get some warmth but it is still growing less than desirable. Anyway, i tried my first bread with this recipe except that i didnt add salt until the first mix and autolyse for 50 mins. i read some things about salt inhibiting autolysing and also read some of your recipes not adding the salt until later. I diluted the last 10ml of water with 7g salt and pinch it into the dough after the 1st 50 mins before folding. The 1st and 2nd Folding was great, the dough was stretchy and easy to manage. but once it tried to take it out the 3rd time to shape, it was tacky and slack. I couldnt shape it and tried to fold it again and rest for 20 mins. Then i proofed it and it didnt rise as much and decided to bake it because it was late. the bread turned out flavorful and with some air holes and it bounce back when i press it so it has a nice chewy consistency but it didnt rise enough. It it because my starter is weak that is why it got too slack after the 2nd folding and thus didnt rise enough during proofing? anyway. i love the bread and i feel incredible how i can make something out of air water and flour. Thank you both so much!
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Emily,
Thank you for sharing your experience. You are right, your starter needs to mature and you just have to keep on baking and practicing. So keep on feeding, refreshing and using it. The most important thing next to that is the challenge of your climate and the temperature of your dough. It is very well possible your dough was too cold. It would be ideal if you could measure it with a digital thermometer ( a great gift maybe for the holidays). Make sure your dough is warm enough to get a good rise and use warmer water for instance to compensate and use your just warmed up oven to proof. So, compensate where needed and keep in mind that it is important to take your time with sourdough, sometimes the proofing just takes a bit longer, so check your dough and give it some extra time if it is not ready for the oven.
You can read our tips here:
www.weekendbakery.com/posts…mperature/
You are on your way and with the above in mind the next bakes will get better and better, we are sure!
Happy sourdough baking!
JaiVes says
Dear,
I am a home baker with some 5 years experience but always baked with baker’s yeast (fresh yeast). Now I wanted to try baking with fermented yeast (Vemont type sourdough bread/pure wheat sourdough). I toke your recipe for whole wheat bread to make the trial.
The problem I faced twice is that my dough is (in my opinion) too wet.
I use a Rofco kneader (home model: type KN4) and as the bowl is fixed to the kneader it is very difficult to get the dough out of the bowl once kneaded (still very stiky and not firm enough to get it decently out of the kneader.
Formerly, with baker’s yeast I used 55% hydration. Is 70% not too much?
What would be the consequence if next time I lower the hydration to somewhat like 60%?
Weekend Bakers says
Hi JaiVes,
If you are used to 55% and go to 70% it will feel very wet and different of course and it takes some getting used to. We do have a lot of tips for handling these wetter does and we advice you to take a look at them before the next bake: www.weekendbakery.com/posts…ion-dough/
Factors that also play a part in the end result are the absorption of the flour you use and the protein content of the flour. because there can be differences, you might need to adjust a bit and use slightly less moisture for example. Of course it is no problem to start at a lower hydration level and work your way up a bit if possible. We would suggest going for 65% after reading our tips and see how that turns out. With practice you will get used to the sticky, but we agree it is less handy to clean your bowl when it is fixed to the mixer…
Hope this helps,
Ed & Marieke