32 hour light whole wheat loaf

32 hour light whole wheat loaf:

I wanted to start a new category but could not find out how from the instructions.

I use whole wheat flour and my early recipes all resulted in very dense loaves. But somewhere in the ether, I found a sour dough recipe that seems to work for a 50:50 blend of flours. But it takes some time:

I mix together 16 oz each of fresh milled hard red winter wheat and organic bread flour, then add 22 oz of slightly warmed purified water and mix it until fully incorporated; cover bowl with plastic and let sit for 12 hours. Then add 0.7 oz pink Himalayan salt and 1.6 oz very fresh starter (refreshed 5 hours earlier) and hand mix for at least 5 minutes (wetting hands as needed). The dough will really change consistency. Spray top with olive oil, and cover bowl with plastic for 12-15 hours. It should really expand! Then turn out onto floured surface; sprinkle flour over the mixture; flatten it out; and stretch it several times in all 4 directions, folding it over onto itself in thirds each time (left and right; then top and bottom), flattening it out after each set of stretches. By the fourth time, the gluten should toughen up a whole lot. Using a dough cutter, roll it into a tight ball, sprinkle more flour and cover with plastic for 15-20 minutes. I then follow Eric’s great idea of oil-spraying a wide bowl and sprinkling it liberally with wheat germ. I then sprinkle in a heavy seed mix of sesame, pumpkin, caraway, poppy and sunflower seeds, (optional: dump the seeds on baking sheet and bake for 10-15 minutes) and dump the dough mixture (which should have expanded again) in the bowl. The seeds will stick to the dough mixture. Cover with a tea towel for two hours. At the 90 minute mark, pop the Dutch oven or Cloche into a 500 degree oven. When oven is hot enough, sprinkle (pot) with medium course corn meal and any remaining seed mixture; carefully dump the mixture into the pot and bake - covered - for 35 minutes; reduce heat to 450, remove cover and bake for another 20 minutes. Turn loaf onto cooling rack for at least an hour (90 minutes is better) and then dig in.

Before finding this recipe, all my loaves were so dense I had to toast even fresh slices. But now the crumb is light and airy . . . and the seeded crust is out of this world.

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Gorgeous!! All those seeds sound so good.

I should have noted that this recipe was swiped (by me) from The Fresh Loaf. Also I modified my original proportions: (a) I feed my starter 1:2:2 (starter/flour/water); (b) I use only 1.0 oz of fresh starter; and © I now use a full 3 cups of slightly warmed water (because someone suggested that the denser the mixture, the more difficulty the gas bubbles have rising through the dough).