Sourdough with rye and spelt flour, packed with soaked seeds, lentils, carrot and zucchini.
Making sourdough takes time, but built into your lifestyle as a weekly routine can be an enjoyable way to enjoy home-baked bread that is lower in gluten thanks to the sourdough fermentation process, and if you choose to replace wheat with the ancient grain spelt (dinkel), it is also lower in FODMaPs.
I bake this bread each weekend, as sandwiches make for an easy lunch, and I discovered that I can hide a lot of goodness in the bread, which goes down even with my fussiest eater. You can also add the vegetable fiber from juicing. By saving half the dough, it's barely any work to make new fresh bread rolls for the second day (Sunday).
First step: Liberate yourself from the need to measure precisely. You do not actually need to measure anything. To be honest, I do not measure anything to make this sourdough. The quantity of flour is determined by the moisture from the vegetables and soaked seeds & lentils. Feel free to adjust quantities to suit your tastes.
To start making sourdough, you need your sourdough starter culture, which you keep in the fridge during the week (Instructions at end).
Ingredients. (makes approx 20 small bread rolls (2x10 rolls over 2 days)
Starter culture (see instructions at end)
1 medium carrot (beetroot is also great)
1 medium zucchini
0.5 dl sunflower seeds
0.5 dl pumpkin kernels
0.5 dl linseeds
0.5 dl whole rye or oats
1 dl red lentils
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp himalaya salt
1 tsp vitamin C powder (optional to make a lighter fluffier bread)
~4 dl Spelt flour
~4 dl Rye flour
~2 dl Special mjöl (or regular bread making flour)
~0.5dl sesame and/or poppy seeds for on top.
Method
Day 1) Friday morning: Soak lentils, whole rye/oats, sunflower and pumpkin seeds in plenty of water, covered. Soak lentils separately if you want to save some for garnish.
Friday any-time, latest early evening) Add ~200ml of your starter culture to approx 3 heaped tbsp of any flour you like. Add enough cooled boiled water (below 40deg) to create a slurry. Cover and allow to sit at room temp for a few hours, or all day. You should see bubbles on the surface.
Friday evening: Rinse soaked seeds/lentils several times and drain off the water and add to the culture, saving some lentils for on top if you like (add more water to these). Then add linseeds, followed by finely grated carrot and zucchini and olive oil. Mix through to combine.
Add flours, stepwise whilst mixing and then kneading until you reach a doe-like consistency that allows kneading (by hand or with kneading arm). Knead approx 5 mins whilst adding additional flour to achieve a doe consistency. Let rest 5 min, add the salt and vitamin C, then continue kneading 2min). You will find that as more liquid is released from the vegetables, you will need to add more flour. Sprinkle with flour and cover with plate or airtight cover overnight and store at 4deg (or outside if temp is between 2-15 deg). My fridge is often too full so I put it outside.
Day 2) Saturday morning: Return doe to room temperature (its easier to knead if slightly warmer). Then knead, adding more flour if needed. Divide in half, and flatten half the doe on a sheet of baking paper on a baking tray (return the other half to the bowl, sprinkle with flour, cover and return to the refrigerator for baking the next day). Sprinkle with sesame and/or poppy seeds, slice into desired shapes for bread-rolls with a blunt spatula, cover with a clean tea towel and allow to rise for 1-3h. (Put in a warmer place for faster rising).
Bake 15min at 220oC. Add 3-4 ice blocks to the oven to create steam.
After baking, remove from oven and cover with tea-towel to allow to cool.
Enjoy!
How to make a sourdough starter culture from scratch
Note: the bacteria for the sourdough are the bacteria naturally found in the flour.
Ingredients:
~1/2 cup organic spelt or rye flour
Cooled boiled water
½ grated green apple (to initiate the base culture first time).
Glass jar with lid approx 5 dl volume.
Base culture (once off)
Grate ½ peeled apple into ½ cup organic spelt (dinkel) flour and cooled boiled water to make a viscous paste.
Leave in a sealed jar at room temperature for several days, until it starts bubbling. Then store in refrigerator.
Feeding your base culture (once/wk or when you bake)
Your base culture needs feeding approx. 1x/week. After removal of some of the culture to make your sourdough, replace with ~3 tbsp spelt flour and enough cooled boiled water to achieve a viscous paste, and store in the refrigerator in a sealed jar). If not using your dough, simply add 1 tbsp flour and some cooled boiled water to feed your culture until next use, and store in the refrigerator. If you culture is very slow to bubble, you can leave the starter culture out of the refrigerator for an hour or two (or overnight) to boost replication.
Starter culture (each time you bake)
Transfer ¾ of the base culture to ¾ cup spelt flour, plus enough cooled boiled water to make a viscous paste.
Leave covered at room temp for 3-4h, or until you see bubbles on the surface.