artisan barley seeds rye sourdough bread

This month, Karen from the “brot and bread” blog was asking bakers on “the fresh loaf” to come together and try to recreate a special kind of multi grain artisanal bread that she has fallen in love with during her holidays in Germany. The sourdough bread was a very moist type of whole wheat bread with plenty of goodies inside. I immediately thought about participating, but being in lack of many of the required grains for this bread, I thought about another bread that was on my list of “homemade rye breads to bake” for a very long time, a wonderful grain based bread that is healthy and full of good stuff is this bread that I baked, following Marla's recipe from over here.

I liked to bake this bread today because I like barley, which is used in the bread as a main ingredient, which is a wonderful and healthy grain that has a lot of fibers as well as iron contents. Also being one of the main ingredients of beer, what could go wrong if put it in my bread as well? So here with go with this great tasting whole grain bread.

Sourdough:

• 100 g rye flour
• 100 g water
• 10 g rye sourdough starter

Mix everything together to smooth dough without any clumps inside and let it rest in a covered bowl at 24-28°C for 14 – 20 hours. After your sourdough is ready, don't forget to take some starter away and keep it in the fridge for your next bread.

Sponge:

• 100 g wheat flour
• 80 g water
• 1 g fresh yeast

Mix everything and let it rest for about 12 hours at room temperature

Scald:

• 110 g cracked barley seeds
• 50 g roasted sunflower seeds
• 40 g linseeds
• 10 g black sesame seeds
• 12 g salt
• 300 g hot water

Mix everything and pour the hot water over it and let it rest for 12 hours at least

Saaten mix - grain mix

Main dough:

• Sourdough
• Scald
• Sponge
• 140 g wheat flour
• 50 g rye flour
• 10 g sesame oil 
• 50 g grated apple
• 6 g fresh yeast

Ingredients - Zutaten

Mix everything well together and knead for about 10 minutes, cover the bowl up, put it in a warm place and let it rest for 30 - 40 minutes. After that, fold the dough 3 times in the bowl. I am making 2 loafs out of the dough. So I split the dough in two equal portions and I shape the dough into the shape of the inside of the bread baking forms so it looks a bit like a big sausage. In the meantime butter the bread baking forms with butter and pop the dough in the forms. Cover it up and let the form rest in a warm place for another 60 minutes. At the end of those 60 minutes the yeast of the sourdough was working and increasing the volume of the bread but maximum two times.

Dough in the bread baking form - Teig in der Brotbackform

Before popping it in the oven, I am using the finger probing technique to see if the breads are ready to be baked now. Then I am taking a water sprayer to spray some water on top of the breads. Then I add oatflakes on the loafs and I cut both breads once in the middle.
In the meantime preheat the oven to 250 degrees Celsius. Then pop the bread form in the oven and pour a cup of water in the bottom of the oven. Actually, you can put a baking tray in the oven when you preheat it. This way you can pour the water in the tray instead of the bottom of the oven, it’s less messy. Anyhow the effect is the same, what you want is the hot steam. Now you bake the bread in the hot steam for 10 minutes. Then you open the oven, let the steam out (eventually take the baking tray out) and reduce the heat of the oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Continue baking the bread for another 35 – 40 minutes. Then pop the breads out of the form and spray some water on the bottom and the side of the bread. It the bottom and the top of the bread are still too pale, you can put the bread back in the oven and bake for another 5 minutes.