sesame seed bread with rye sour dough - why self made bread is healthy?

Fresh cut whole grain rye sour dough bread

Actually all my breads are healthy. But I have been saying that before, without writing a bit more information on why I claim that this is so. You even might think now that this is because I am using a variety of corn as an addition to my bread. But that is only part of the answer. Even adding the corn to my artisan bread it will still consist of 90% flour. Actually, the secret is within the flour. This is also the reason why I mainly bake with rye flour and not with wheat flour because my rye flour is a whole meal flour, this means it still contains all contents of the whole corn such as the endosperm, the brush, the bran and the germ. By using whole meal flour, you will assure that all the Vitamin B, potassium, magnesium, zinc and many fibers will get into your bread. So, eating enough of my organic bread will actually help your digestion and it also helps you reduce the risk of colorectal cancer, it slows down the increase of blood sugar levels and for this reason it will give you a saturated feeling that lasts longer.


But not only using whole meal flour is healthier. Another important point is to know how the homemade bread that you can buy in your supermarket is actually made. Those big chain bakeries actually will use a lot of nasty stuff such as emulsifier, lecithin, artificial glue, baking yeasts and preservative agents. There is more to that list, but I think it already gives you a good overview of the chemical cocktail that you eat when you are buying non “artisan” bread.

Besides all these health reasons I actually never get tired to tell how DELICIOUS self made bread actually is. For this reason, I have been neglecting my other cooking activities a bit and was a bit heavy on the bread baking section, I admit. But when I got more time, in the near future, I will get back to cooking and baking other food items again, take this as a promise from me, yes there is still that cake that I need to bake for you, sis...

So here is the recipe that I found on this german webpage (der Sauerteig)  in the forum section, but whatsoever slightly modified to my needs.

Sourdough:
215 g rye flour
215 g water
10 g sourdough starter
let is rest for 14 - 16 hours at room temperatures but not too cold

Sponge:
95 g wheat flour (try to get wholemeal wheat flour)
90 g water
1 g yeast (or 0.3 g dried yeast)
Mix it up and let it rest for 2 hours at room temperature, then for another 12 hours in the fridge

Scald:
40 g Sesame
50 g linseed
60 g roasted pumpink seeds
290g hot water
let it rest for at least 30 minutes. I actually also let mine soak and rest for 14 hours like the sourdough and it was just fine


Sesame, linseed and roasted pumpkin seeds make up the scald

The sponge, the sour dough and the scald makes up the main dough

Main dough:
Sourdough
Scald
Sponge
280 g rye flour
120 g wheat flour
5 g fresh yeast or 1.66 g dried yeast
14 g salt

The following is the corrected version of the bread, as some of my readers saw and tole me, this is not a free formed bread but a bread made in a break baking form. So this is the corrected version, I want to thank my readers for the attention to the detail

Mix everything well together; knead the dough for five - eight minutes. Now let the dough rest for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes we now form the bread. If you are not sure how to form / shape bread, please follow my link on "bread baking basics + know how". Attention, the dough is very wet and not easy to form, if it’s too wet, you can add a bit of flour. Also add a lot of flour on the table before forming the bread. Now, this is the kind of bread that will be baked in a baking form. So I will form the bread not round but in a lengthy shape so it will fit in the form. The form we butter out well first, if you want, you can add some sesame seeds on the buttered form before resting the bread dough in it. After forming the bread this way, we carefully lay it with the closure face down into the bread form. Once the dough is added, I also wet the top of the dough (which means the bottom of the bread) so it won't get a hard crust on top. Let the bread ferment another 60 minutes. Actually, after 45 minutes I spray some more water on top of the bread and sprinkle some sesame seeds on top of it to make is look tastier.

Once the breads have been fermented, (I do the thumb testing to see how fermented the bread is inside, I will write more about this technique here soon), I wet the top of the bread one more time I pop it in the preheated oven. The oven should be pre heated on 250°C. Now pour a cup of hot water in the oven (if you do not have this inbuilt steaming program in your oven at home), pop the bread in the oven and also place a cup of water on the floor of the oven to give some additional steam later on. Quickly close the door so the hot steam will be caught within the oven. Having all that steam in the oven is, like mentioned many times before, extremely important for a scrumptious crust and a great consistency of the bread.

Bake the self made bread for 10 minutes like this, then open up the door, let the steam out, lower the heat on 190 - 200°C and continue to bake the bread for another 45 minutes. Then take the bread out of the form and finish baking the bread another 5 minutes so that the crust on the bottom of the bread also gets some color.

Consumption tips: This is a rye based sourdough bread. Rye based breads are best consumed one day after they are baked. I know it is hard to wait with all those fantastic smells around you when the bread is fresh from the oven, but be patient, wait for one day and you will be rewarded with an awesome tasting artisanal bread indeed.