100% Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread

This bread is a favorite of mine partly because its a rich wonderfully
flavorful bread, and partly because it breaks so many rules people just know
to be true.

We're told you can't make a light bread with all whole-wheat flour, that you
have to either add some bread flour or gluten to the dough. We don't do
either. We just handle the dough well, and the bread rises. Beautifully.
This bread is based on a recipe in Laurel Robertson's "The Laurel's Kitchen
Bread Book" , "A Loaf For Learning". I have converted the recipe to be a
sourdough recipe.

Laurel gives exhaustive instructions on how to make a whole wheat bread that
will rise nicely. Her book has more than a recipe in it, it has 33 pages of
the most clear, informative description of how to bake bread I have ever
read. What follows is the Readers's Digest Condensed version. I recommend
purchasing her book, and reading the full directions. You may safely assume
that each step in the instructions below occupy several pages in the book.

The first step is to convert your starter to all whole wheat. I have used
"High Altitude Hungarian Stone Ground Style Whole Wheat Flour" and Rocky
Mountain Milling's organic whole-wheat flour to do this. RRM's flour is the
better flour, but the High Altitude flour has the advantage of being
available in grocery stores here. You can use any finely ground whole-wheat
flour.

I start by refreshing my regular starter until it is lively and active. Then
mix 2 cups of water and 2 TBSP of the active starter, and whisk them
together. Then whisk in 3 cups of the whole-wheat flour. Let it sit
overnight. In the morning, it will probably be ready for use, but go ahead
and refresh it again with 1 cup of water and 1 1/2 cups of whole-wheat
flour. Once it gets bubbly, you're ready to continue. Remember to save some
of your starter so you won't have to convert the starter again.

Here are the ingredients for a loaf of the bread:

1 cup active sourdough starter

¾ cups water

2 1/8 cup finely ground whole-wheat flour

1 tsp salt

1.5 TBSP honey

2 TBSP oil

The original recipe could be made with yogurt by reducing the water used. If
you decide to do this, reduce the amount of water by 1/3 cup, add 1/3 cup
cold yogurt (plain, of course), and reduce the salt by 1/4 tsp. We didn't
notice a lot of difference between the two versions.

Pour starter, into a mixing bowl. Add the rest of the water, the salt,
honey, oil, and (optional) yogurt. Whisk together.

Add the rest of the flour a cup at a time and stir. Make sure the dough is
well mixed, feeling it to see if the water has been incorporated through the
dough, as Laurel suggests in her book.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead until it passes the
windowpane test, probably 10 to 15 minutes. If you double the recipe, it
will take twice as long. Having a scraper handy is a good thing, as you can
scrape up the stuff that sticks to the board, so it can be incorporated back
into the dough. About half way through the kneading, the dough will get a
lot less sticky, even without adding much flour.

Try not to add too much flour. (I usually add about 1/2 cup per loaf in the
kneading process.)

Form the dough into a ball in such a way as to form a gluten cloak on the
outside of the ball, see the instructions in the book.

Put a bit of oil in the bottom of a bowl, put the smooth side of the dough
onto the oil. Turn the bread so it's lightly coated with oil. Cover the
bowl, and let the dough rise about 1 1/2 hours in a covered place.

When the dough has doubled in size, or is ready as per Laurel's test, gently
deflate the dough by pressing your fist into the ball, then fold over the
sides of the ball to form it into a new ball, and put back into the mixing
bowl. Again, let the dough rise as per Laurel's instructions, which will
take about 1/2 as long the first rise.

Again, gently deflate the bread, and form a loaf, and put the loaf into a
greased 4 x 8" bread pan. (I use "Baker's Joy" to grease my loaf pans.)

Put the loaf aside to rise, which should be a bit faster than the second
rise. Don't let it over-rise!

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Slash the bread with a single slash down the
center of the loaf. Pop the bread into the oven. After 1/2 an hour, look at
it. If the loaf is quite brown, reduce the temperature to 325 F. If the
bread is pale or pinkish, raise the temperature to 375 F. You may want to
use those temperatures for your next loaf. If you are at high altitudes, or
you use glass bread pans, you may need to adjust the temperature further
(see section VI, "Baking at altitudes").

Let it continue baking another 15 minutes. Pull the bread out and check it
for doneness. I prefer to pop the loaf out of the pan and stick a quick
reading dial thermometer into the bottom of the loaf. I think it's done when
it reaches 190 F inside. However, at altitudes less than 5,280 feet, I'd
probably shoot for 195 or even 200 F. (At 7,700 feet, where I live, the
boiling point is 198 F, so trying for more than 190 F is just gonna burn the
bread.)

Let it cool, slice and enjoy! I've made about 15 loaves of this bread as I
write this and all are light, open grained, and delightful. I'd never have
believed I could make a light whole wheat bread if I hadn't seen it!