Heart Bread

One of my friends / customers recently had a heart attack and bypass surgery. He loves my bread, but his wife is understandably concerned about his diet, so I created a new bread for them based on some research into diet and cardiovascular health. There is evidence that whole grains, particularly oats, are related to reduced cardiovascular risk. Good fats can be found in olive oil and flax seeds, and sprouted flour and long, slow fermented sourdoughs may also have benefits (at least for digestibility if not heart health). Here's what I came up with:

I'm finding the addition of a little yeast water (apple, in this case) makes for a softer dough. This small amount probably won't add to the taste much, especially as the sourdough sort of takes over. And I added the bit of vital wheat gluten to strengthen the dough because of the relatively weak sprouted spelt flour and oats / oat bran.

The dough was a bit sticky but strong and fairly easy to shape. I mixed it in the big mixer (made a batch of six) for about 4 minutes, then did three or four stretch and folds over the first two hours. It ended up sitting in the coolish basement for about five hours, then I put it in the fridge overnight to bulk ferment.

This morning I scaled it and shaped it, putting it into floured baskets to prove.

About an hour and a half later I popped them into pre-heated cast iron pots to bake. They're still in the oven at the moment, but the test loaf (same formula, slightly smaller than the production loaves) is at the top of this post.

The crumb is lovely and moist, with a complex slightly sour flavour. Something my customer (and I) can feel good about eating! Oh, and he loves it. From the heart. :)