Mellow Bakers March 2011 – Sunflower Seed Bread with Rye Sourdough

My second bread for the Mellow Bakers this month was the Sunflower Seed Bread with Rye Sourdough. I was a bit sceptical because I thought the BBA Sunflower Seed Rye was kind of boring. I’m just not a sunflower seeds person (hubby is, though). So I thought, even if I didn’t like this bread hubby probably would.

The rye sourdough wasn’t a problem at all – I just used my liquid levain, added rye flour and water and let it ripe for 16 hours. For the soaker the recipe says to use rye chops – I still haven’t really found out what rye chops are, but I figured that “Roggenschrot” (very coarse rye meal) could be something similiar, so I stuck some rye kernels into my grain mill and ground them on the most coarse level. After 16 hours, I mixed bread flour, sunflower seeds, water, salt, yeast, malt syrup, soaker and sourdough, let it rest for 1 1/2 hours with 2 stretch & folds in between and then shaped a giant 3-pound loaf. I thought of dividing it, but I have this huge 3-pound brotform which I’ve never used, so today was the day.  This bread smelled great, but as I had suspected, I’m just not a big fan of sunflower seeds in my bread. The hubby and my kids loved it, though.