This recipe is very loosely based on King Arthur’s “Vermont Whole Wheat Oatmeal Honey Bread”. I turned it into a sourdough bread so I could use my lievito madre and drastically reduced the sugar. Here in Germany we’re not used to that much sugar in breads. American white breads especially taste like cake to us.

There are some other tiny changes to the recipe, to adapt to the things I have in the cupboards and to make the baker’s percentages easier to deal with. Feel free to change things up some more and use what you have.

The result was a fluffy and delicious sandwich bread that’s also great for toast or grilled cheese.

Here’s what I used:

• 480g boiling water
• 14g salt
• 100g steelrolled grains (I used a mix of oat, barley, rye, wheat and rice, you can use just oats)
• 2 Tbsp maple syrup
• 60g butter
• 250g ancient yellow wheat, freshly milled (ordinary whole wheat is ok as well)
• 250g light spelt flour (or all purpose flour)
• 160g lievito madre (fed the day before)
• 80g cool water

We’re working with an enriched dough with lots of butter (and depending on your tastes maybe a lot of sugar), so make sure your lievito madre is up to the task, Feed it the day before and use it when it’s more than doubled in size and full of bubbles.

Add the boiling water, salt, steelrolled grains and maple syrup to the mixing bowl, stir and let the grains soak up some of the moisture. Once the mixture is cooled to about body temperature, you can add everything else and start mixing.

Usually, enriched dough recipes tell you to add the cold butter at the very end of the kneading process, but I found it doesn’t really make a difference in small batch baking. So I just throw everything into the machine at once and my trusty Ankarsrum takes care of it.

Knead the dough until the windowpane test is successful.

I gave the dough about 30 minutes of rest in the bowl before I shaped my loaves and placed them in their bread pans. I had enough dough for 3 mini pans or 2 20cm (8inch) pans.

500g dough per mini pan, 750g for a 20cm one.

I had the dough rising at 30°C in the proofing box for 4 1/2 hours. I was in a hurry, otherwise I’d have chosen an overnight rise. Seeing as yeast doubles activity every 5°C, I would have done a 24 hour counter rise in my cool kitchen (about 20°C / 68F).

Once done, the breads were filling the pans a bit more than halfway. The poke test left visible dents, so into the oven they went. If I’d had waited another 20 minutes or so, the tops wouldn’t have ripped open , but I don’t really care.

I pre-heated the oven including a baking steel to 220°C (430F) and turned the oven down to 180°C (350F) once the bread was in. I baked with steam for 40 minutes, the last 10 minutes without the pans. Core temp was 96°C (204F) when I pulled them out.

The breads are super moist and fluffy, taste great with jam. The bread is aromatic but not sweet at all, so cheese and bacon should work with it as well.

Enjoy 🙂