Wheat Long-Bread

A wheat sourdough bread that could hardly be more basic: Water, flour, salt, that's it. OK, there is 0.1g of yeast in it, too, but since that is roughly 0.02% of the amount of flour I pretend it isn't there. Most of the recipes I made use rye sourdough so I was pleasantly surprised how tasty this bread is. It came out a little bit denser than most breads I have made, but that doesn't effect the pleasure of eating it. One of my favorite breads without seeds or grains.

Not an awesome name for this bread, but then I only translated the name from the original recipe. ;-)

Sourdough

• 150g (5 1/4oz) wheat flour
• 110ml (3 3/4oz) water
• 15g (1/2oz) wheat sourdough starter

Combine all ingredients in a bowl, stir well, cover and let rest for 18-20 hours. If you have enough sourdough starter for the whole batch you can just use that; take it out of the fridge a couple of hours before using it to let it adjust to room temperature.

Poolish

• 100g (3 1/2oz) medium ground wheat flour or bread flour
• 100ml (3 1/2oz)water
• 0.1g fresh yeast

Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl and stir well. Cover and let rest for 20 hours.

Main Dough

• Sourdough
• Poolish
• 200g (7oz) light rye flour
• 100g (3 1/2oz) wheat bread flour
• 150ml (5oz) water
• 11g (1 1/2 tsp) salt

Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl and mix well. Then knead with the dough hook on low speed for 6 minutes and another 2 minutes on speed 2.

Cover and let rest for 2 hours. After one our, fold the dough inside the mixing bowl: Use a spatula and fold the dough from the edges into the middle and press in. Go around the dough until the dough is ball shaped with a tight surface.

Quickly form the dough into elongated shape and place in a rectangular banetton (seam up). Cover with plastic wrap and let proof for 75 minutes in your oven with only the light turned on, creating a temperature of about 85-90°F (30-32°C).

Preheat oven to 485°F (250°C).

Place parchement paper on a baking sheet and turn dough over onto sheet (the seam is now down). Use a tooth pick or a skewer and punch holes into the surface of the dough (~ 1/2 inch apart). Transfer into the oven on middle rack, spray a lot of water into the oven and bake for 15 minutes. Then open the oven door wide to let out the steam, close it, reduce temperature to 395°F (200°C) and bake for another 35 mintues with falling temperature. If we want a nice crust, open the oven door during the last 5 minutes of baking.

Let cool on a cooling rack.

Original recipe ("Langbrot", German language) in "Das Brotbackbuch" by Lutz Geißler, published by Ulmer Eugen Verlag.