After about 6 months of baking sourdough whole wheat bread, by George, I think
I've got it! I've got a highly repeatable and very tasty bread. For those of
you who are interested in making this extremely simple and basic rustic bread,
with a wonderful nutty flavor, which tastes excellent dipped in virgin olive
oil, read on.

First, the equipment:

1. A baking stone. I have a fibrament that I ordered off of the web. I like it.
I haven't tried anything else to compare to, but compared to no stone, the
fibrament rocks.
2. A bannaton. This is just a wicker basket with a cloth lining. Available at
cost plus.
3. Parchment papers. Also at cost plus.
4. A peel. Also at cost plus.
5. A large glass mixing bowl
6. A large wooden spoon (very thick and solid looking), and a regular spoon.
7. An oven. If you have an older oven, test the temperature range at each dial
setting graduation with an oven thermometer. My oven set to 350 is actually
running at 425 (410-440)! Definitely check first!
8. A kitchen towel
9. A water sprayer/mister.

And the ingredients:

1. Wheat flour. Preferably bread flour. You can grind your own from hard wheat
berries. I highly recommend the Country Living Mill if you want to do this.
2. Water. Municipal tap water is just fine.
3. Salt.
4. Baking powder. I use Rumsford. Purists use none.
5. Sourdough starter. This is talked about ad nauseum on this list, so I'll
defer details, except that I use a mix of Carl's (great yeast properties) and a
potato starter that I started here in San Francisco (great taste / bacteria).
Both of these starters use white bread flour, so technically the bread is not
100% whole wheat.

The process:

1. The night before, put about 4T of starter into the large mixing bowl, and add
about 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour and 1/2 cup of water. Mix. Cover with a wet
kitchen towel. Leave overnight.

2. Mix in your salt and baking powder. I don't measure it, but the
salt is probably about 2 teaspoons, and the baking powder probably about 1
teaspoon, maybe a touch more.

3. Add water. Add enough water. Again, I don't measure anything, so I add enough
for a loaf of the general size I'm interested in. Stir it all up into a bready
soup with the thick spoon.

4. Add whole wheat flour, and keep stirring, until it gets really pasty and sticks
in globs to the spoon. Use another regular spoon to scrape off the globs. Throw
more flour on the spoon and in the bowl and keep stirring and adding flour. But
stop once it's thick enough that you might be able to knead it once, and still be
able to pull you hand out without it sticking to your hand.

5. Coat your hands in flour and knead. The dough should feel light and airy, fluffy
and warm. Don't let your hands stick; if after a kneed or two it's getting
sticky, add more flour. But don't add too much flour! My rule of thumb is five
kneads. If I can knead it five times without my hands sticking, and I have to
recoat the loaf and my hands with a thin layer of flour, and then can knead again
five more times and its about to stick to my hands -- then I'm DONE. This is NOT
a whole lot of kneading (maybe 40 kneads total), which is different from white
bread. You need some kneading to develop the gluten, but wheat flour is prickly
anyways, and so you won't easily get the huge bubbles you find in white bread.
Lots of kneading is not so important. I find it more important to keep the dough
feeling softer, wetter, lighter -- which means less flour, and less ability to
knead.

6. Coat the loaf in flour, and coat the banneton in flour. Put the loaf in the
banneton (I put seam sides down), and cover it with the wet kitchen towel.

7. Let it rise for about 6 hours. This depends on how active your starter is, but
6 hours always seems to work for me. It should not quite double, but get close
to double, with maybe some visible bubbles breaking through the surface, or
stretch marks.

8. Preheat your oven to 425F. After it's preheated, set it on bake, and leave it
for another 5-10 minutes or so. This helps heat up the stone, which takes longer
to heat than the air in the oven.

9. Put a parchment sheet on the peel, and then turn it over on top of the banneton.
Get it centered, and then turn the whole thing over, letting the bread drop onto
the parchment onto the peel. Do this only AFTER the oven is ready, because it's
gonna start spreading out sideways right away, and you want to move quickly.

10. Slash the loaf. Then spray it with the mister. Really get it nice and wet.

11. Slide it into the oven. For the first 5-10 minutes, spray it again about 3 times,
and then use the peel to rotate it around and spray the backside at least once.

12. Let it bake about 45 minutes. I usually spray it down again about 25-30 minutes
into it. It seems you can't spray it too much. This makes the crust a bit
chewier (although it is still closer to cracker-crispy than it is to chewy, which
is A-OK by me), and also helps keep the crust from burning, so you can get the
middle baked longer (a common early problem, especially with too much heat: a burnt
crust and a raw middle).

13. After the duration, take it out. Set it on the counter, uncovered, and let it
cool for at least an hour.

14. You're done! Eat some. Dip it in first cold press virgin olive oil! After
letting it sit out for a day, store it in a plastic ziploc bag on the counter
at room temperature, without zipping the bag closed (just fold it under) so it
doesn't get too dry.


Comments appreciated. Improvement suggestions appreciated. This works quite well for
me, but I am no expert.

Happy baking!

-Mike