This is one of my personal favorites, the aroma that fills the house when you toast the seeds before you are even doing anything with your actual dough. The toasting of the seeds brings out a lot deeper flavor profile to the dough in comparison to when you don’t toast the seeds.
An important factor to this dough is the need to pre-soak the toasted seeds before adding them to the dough to prevent the seeds from absorbing all the water in the dough. I usually soak the seeds in about 5% extra water right when I start with autolyse.
Ingredients for one loaf (+/- 850 gram).
- 300 gram bread flour
- 80 gram whole wheatflour
- 20 gram rye flour
- 100 gram mature sourdoughstarter
- 300 gram water
- 8 gram salt
- 50 gram toasted seedmix soaked in an additional 20 gram of water
You will need extra non toasted seedmix to coat the dough on the outside if you want.
Method.
First things first, start by making your seedmix adding equal parts of sunflower, flax, sesame and pumpkinseeds in a bowl. I usually make a bigger batch and toast half of it. You can toast the seeds in a skillet or on a baking tray in the oven. You can smell oil in the seeds as they are toasting it starts to smell very nice and nutty.
While the seeds are toasting you can start by mixing the flours starter and 275 grams of the warter. Let this sit for autolyse for 1 hour. Let the seeds cool down a bit and mix with the extra water as described in the ingredients. Set aside so they can absorb the water.
When the hour for autolyse has passed by its time to add the salt and the remaining water to your dough. Work the salt and water gently into your dough and give the dough a couple of good slap and folds, till about ¾ developed.
At this point you will start with bulk fermentation. Mostly I give the dough a bulk fermentation for 4-6 hours (depending on the dough and room temperature) including laminating the seeds in and 4 sets of stretch and folds)
After the first 30 minutes it is time to incorporate the seeds in to the dough. Most of the time I will do this with the lamination technique.
For this method you have to wet the countertop a little bit by spraying or rubbing just a little bit of water on top. Then its time to start stretching your dough till almost full capacity. If you use to much water the dough will not stick but it will keep sliding over the counter, It needs to just hold on but when you stretch the dough it needs to give you the opportunity to without tearing apart. If the dough is stretched enough it will be time to spread the seeds on 2/3 of the dough. I would recommend to reserve about ¼ of the seeds for the next step.
When you spread the seeds fold the part without seeds in first, then fold over the other side. You will have a rectangular piece of dough with no seeds on top. Spread the remaining seeds over this dough and fold this into a nice small square/rectangle shape. Cover the dough and set aside for the remaining time of bulk fermentation giving 3 sets of stretch and folds for the first one and half hour.
If your done with the last stretch and fold leave the dough to ferment till it is ready for preshaping. My way for preshaping is actually the same as making a boule. Turn the dough over on a slightly floured counter, fold in both sides, roll the dough towards you and turn it 90 degrees, |9at this moment you are holding an almost batard shaped piece of dough) again you will roll the dough towards you tightening the outside of the dough for strength.
Turn the dough over so it sits seem side down, and put your pinkies and thumbs around the base of the dough. Move your hands In a circulair motion putting pressure on the bottom of the ball and tucking the dough underneath. This should give you a nice ball of dough with a tight skin on top. Leave this to rest for around 15 minutes covered with a couche or linen cloth.
To shape the dough you can either repeat the steps of preshaping to obtain a boule shaped or you can just fold in the sides of the dough and roll it towards you applying a little more pressure to assure a nice strong skin on the dough for a batard.
When you shaped the dough it is time to cover the dough with seeds. A lot of questions have been asked how to do this, do I do it with egg wash or …? The answer is a lot simpler, just take a slightly wet towel, and some untoasted seeds, first roll your dough on the wet towel (or just spray it with a little water) and then press it into the seeds, don’t be afraid they will stick!!
Put your dough into a banneton and leave to fully proof if you want to do a same day bake or put it in the fridge after about 1 hour to bake it retarded.
For baking I always preheat my oven to 240C with my 6 mm baking steel in it. When the oven is preheated apply the steam and put the dough in. turn the oven down to 225C and bake for 30-35 minutes.
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