It’s kind of hard to describe but I am curling my fingers almost into a fist and pulling upward to stretch the dough and then relaxing my fingers and just letting the dough plop back down into the bowl. The main idea is repeatedly stretching the dough which develops gluten strength.
Hope that description helps.
400 g Bob’s Red Mill org whole wheat
200 g Trader Joe’s white whole wheat
11 g salt
500 g water
30 g unfed starter
DAY ONE:
Mix starter into water. Mix flours and salt in Kitchen Aid bowl. On setting #1, add water/starter. When shaggy mass, knead on #2 for 12 minutes. Put in tub for bulk ferment.
BF 1: In proofer at 74 F 9:30 am - 9:30 pm with maybe 3 random stretch/folds throughout the day. At this point, since not at 1.5 volume, covered and left overnight on counter. Room temp overnight was about 61F.
DAY TWO:
BF 2: Next morning at 5:00 am was at 1.5 volume; put in fridge. Didn’t remember to do stretch/folds.
DAY THREE:
BF 3: Next morning at 6:00 am, right out of fridge, did a stretch/fold, shaped and placed in parchment-lined oblong banneton (did Paul’s method of rolling to shape)
Baked at 3:00 pm: preheat 475 F with oblong clay baker; when oven was hot, took dough out of fridge, scored, lifted parchment sling into hot clay baker and baked for 25 minutes covered; then uncovered and lowered to 450 F for another 12 minutes or so, until it looked done enough.
Nice! What a great looking loaf of bread.
That’s exactly why I wrote all that disclaimer about it being a loose methodology and not so much a “recipe”. You made changes that made sense in your context and got a great result.
My first bake with Red Fife. I made a version of this recipe: 400 grams Breadtopia bolted Red Fife, 100 grams Breadtopia bolted soft white, 100 grams WheatMontana AP (this is a local to me AP). All else the same and I followed the guidelines for the rises. For me, even though my kitchen was 62-64F … BUT, I am at 3300 feet : 9.5 hours 1st rise, 10 hours in refrigerator, 3.5 hours final and 1 hour after shaping. My dough was very bubbly and expansion per the recipe.
This is a great recipe to learn from - I certainly did! Even though I have many years bread baking experience, I think that until fairly recently, I was over-proofing. Not horribly and nice loaves but I feel like texture of crumb and crust has improved as has taste. At any rate, this recipe explains what to look for very well. Thanks, Paul!
That little dent from a crumpled bit of parchment … 
That’s a beautiful looking loaf. Curious what you think of the flavor of the Red Fife. I think it’s pretty much my favorite of the hard red wheats that I’ve tried so far - though I am about to embark on a 100% yecora rojo loaf for this weekend…
I like the Red Fife but it is the first heirloom hard red that I’ve tried and I bought bolted vs whole grain. I know … I need to “grow up” and try the “real” stuff
I think I will try 100% of the bolted in my next loaf. The yecora rojo sure sounds interesting per the flavor description.
This many seem like an obvious question: If I want to make two loaves should I just double the recipe? Will the percentages still work? Thank you!
Yes, that should work fine.
Hi Paul,
Thanks for the whole wheat rustic loaf recipe you posted two years ago. Did you gain any new insights since then? I am from Germany and always doing home- milling, but our grains are always lower in protein than yours in the States, so it is not so easy to take a recipe and gain Todd results. I will try whole spelt and may be adding some Gluten…any bonus- Tipps?
Thanks! Kamut
To make things clear: the most difficult issue ist the ovenspring- the dough will rise to sides but not upwards…Shall I make a mixture Spelt and Kamut? (75:25%) to give the dough more strucure (besides the added Gluten). Thanks for helping
If the problem is not enough structure and oven spring, then I’d probably suggest not using spelt and kamut. In my experience, both of those wheats (especially spelt) produce a dough with a lot of extensibility (stretchiness), but very little elasticity (bounce-back-iness ?). In other words, spelt and kamut would likely make the problem of the dough spreading out but not holding its shape even worse.
For grain substitution for this bread, if you can’t get Red Fife in Germany, I’d suggest any hard red wheat that you have access to for more gluten / structure / oven spring.
Also, pay attention to your rising (proofing) time. You may need to adjust it to meet your specific circumstances. If the dough over-proofs, then it can tend to become soupy and spread more.
I’m tempted to try this but am a bit confused about the 10 hour bulk fermentation at 73-75 degrees. My whole grain sourdough (using flours from mills) tends to be ready after just two hours of bulk fermentation at 73 or 74 degrees. Do you just let it keep going even after it has risen, is jiggly and has bubbles?
Because it’s only 30g of cold unfed starter to 500g flour. However you have the right idea and that is a good way to tell the bulk ferment is done. Start in the morning, keep an eye on it and use the 10 hours as a guide but watch the dough.
As @Abe said, …or use even a lot less than 30g of starter. As my method has evolved, I’m now using just about the tiniest inoculation of starter that I can get by just dipping the tip of a spoon (vertically) into my jar of starter (unfed, and right out of the refrigerator) and then stirring what adheres to the tip of the spoon into the water before mixing. I doubt if I have more than a gram of starter in my loaves these days. More about the why and how of tiny amounts of cold, unfed starter here:
Paul - mind blown! I have a whole new area to explore now, thank you!
Paul, how much shorter do you think the times would be if I used fed starter vs. unfed? Have you tried that? Thanks.
Every once in a while (every couple or three months), I do feed my starter and the first bakes after that feeding the starter is more active and the bulk proof gets going faster.
In my experience, the difference between using a small amount of unfed starter and a conventional amount of fed / ripe starter is that the bulk proof just takes a lot longer to get going. Once it does get going, once you see / feel the dough actively rising and aerating, then in my way of thinking about it, you have a newly active starter going inside your dough and everything reverts pretty much to normal timing.
So we are really talking about the length of time of the delay you see before “normal” timing takes over. When I use recently fed, more active starter, I’ve seen this time shortened by several hours. It’s hard to generalize how much shorter because there are other variables that matter; ambient temperature, the flour in the dough, exactly how active the starter is… but I’ve seen the period before I start noticing a rise happening shortened by anywhere from two to four hours.
One thing that perplexes me about this and other methods that mention dough rising in the refrigerator… I have never seen more than maybe a 10% rise, even if I put the temp up to 40 degrees (from the usual 38). Is it maybe that I have over-fermented before refrigerating? It hasn’t seemed that way. That said, I still get a pretty good result with your method! Just curious about this fridge rising phenomenon…
I see a muted rise in the fridge overnight. It’s definitely not like the rise you’d see at room temperature - which I attribute to both the extreme slowing of the microbes metabolic processes at refrigerator temps and also to the compression of the air in the dough’s bubbles at lower temps, but it’s usually more than 10% by my eye.
Could be you are bulk proofing long enough that there isn’t much rise left. You could try experimenting with a shorter bulk proof. But if you are seeing a good oven spring - some ear and a bloom on the baked loaf - then probably you aren’t over-bulk proofing.
There are other possible factors as well. Your dough handling and shaping will have an effect on how much of a rise you see in the basket. I think the more you de-gas the dough and the tighter you shape, the more it’s likely to re-expand in the basket.
Yesterday I forgot to start my bake at my normal time and so the dough got a few extra hours in the fridge. It was a one-time anecdote so there could have been other factors at work, but I did notice what seemed like a higher than normal rise when I took it out to bake. A really nice loaf with a pretty open crumb and more developed flavor, but maybe a little less oven spring than usual - which also seems like the usual tradeoff between length of final proof and oven spring.
It would be helpful if you would give the grind setting for the different grains. I have found that When I am making Rye bread the dough is easier to handle by using a setting of 3.5 -4 on my Morkmill.100 LINO. otherwise the dough will be a wet soggy gloop.
I am using 50% Serafino Rye wheat berries and 50% STRONG BREAD flour from breadtopia. I am among for about a 80% hydration.
Which of the hard spring wheat berries have a protein of 15% or more?
