I should know better by now. Sure it's 80 degrees and muggy, and yeah, I know my wife is going to kill me, heating up our sunny Sunnyside apartment. But...this loaf is beautiful. Beautiful! And it's probably the best German loaf I have made since school! Mehrkornsaatenbröt or multigrain bread is what this toothsome and flavorful loaf is called. Without a decent translator or any German vocabulary sufficient to really make sense of directions, I boldly went where no baker goes. In other words, I winged it. And it happens that winging it worked.
True, it certainly isn't 100% Sauer, but it's good. Very good. Oh, yeah, I already said that. Besides boasting, to make up for the heat I'm getting from my wife and the sun, let me just say this: I didn't add any improver in this loaf, no vitamin c or fava bean or even soy flour which seems pretty common in some backerei breads these days. John Downes is frowning on me, but I did add yeast as a fail-safe measure, only because I wasn't sure about the power of my rye Sauer. Forgive me mate.
Anyway, in truth I Googled a recipe, this one from some trade school named "Bandesfachschule des Deutschen Båckerhandwerks." Roughly translated, it means Technical school of German Hand work bakers. But translated the online directions make no sense at all, and don't give any clue as far as procedure. So here is my "winging it" recipe improvised with help from my fellow bakers in Germany.
The formula:
Sauer:
90g Rye flour
72g water
5g rye sauer
16 hour proof
Soaker:
80g Rye chops
80g Oat flakes
60g Flax seeds
60g Pumpkin seeds
100g Sunflower seeds
300g Hot water
2-3 hours soak before making the final mix
Final Dough:
162g Sauer
680g Soaker
750g bread flour
10g malted barley powder
23g Sea salt
10g instant yeast, (you maybe more hardcore than I was, go total sauer. The original formula asked for 40g!)
390g Water
Sourdough:
I did a short mix 2 minutes on 1st speed and about 3 on second. I wasn't being ambitious about doing by hand, as time was of the essence as my wife would arrive and I wanted the apartment clean and cool!
First rise: without having written down anything to check my loaves or clock, I assume I watched the news and surfed the internet about an hour, then gave the dough a turn.
One more hour passed and the dough had risen a bit, I figured that the high humidity was a factor and the rye in the Sauer. I weighed out two loaves, and shaped them like jelly roll style and placed them into two oiled loaf pans coated with cornmeal. I sprayed the loaves before and rolled them in the seed mix.
Covered them for about and hour and a half, they were booming and ready to be shoved in the oven. Baked at about 460 degrees Faranheit, my oven sucks and the thermometer is hard to read.