Wholemeal loaf with sourdough

When I was making the Mill Loaf the shape you see above was the shape of loaf I was actually aiming for! A good pert, perky loaf, standing to attention, rather than slouching all over the place. Apparently I still need yeast to help me achieve this.

I have blogged about this bread before here and used exactly the same technique as described there. This time I used wholemeal flour rather than wholemeal spelt, but the main difference was the inclusion of a little sourdough ferment. When I made my Mill Loaf, I had a little sourdough culture left over and wondered how much difference it would make to a standard loaf if I were to include it for flavour rather than any raising ability it might have.

I have found that using this type of cooked flour technique (in brief - the loaf is made by pouring 210g boiling water over 75g strong wholemeal flour, leaving to cool to room temp or thereabouts, adding 75g strong wholemeal flour, 150g strong white flour, scant tsp each instant yeast and fine salt, kneading briefly, leaving, kneading and shaping, leave to proof, bake) seems to make the finished loaf somehow sweeter than one made without this step. I'm not sure why this should be, but I wondered how the flavour would change with the sourdough. I had about 80g left from the Mill Loaf and added it to this one.

As I imagined, the loaf behaved very much as it would normally, but the finished product was less sweet and had a slightly more complex flavour. I certainly wouldn't hesitate to add leftover sourdough to a yeasted loaf in the future, and this was certainly a worthwhile experiment. The finished bread was soft and moist with a lovely crumb and crust. Delicious!