12 Months, 12 Loaves
Another year full of bread, just as I’d hoped. At the beginning of 2022, I set the goal of baking at least 12 different sourdough bread recipes. And I did it! In baking these loaves, I hoped to gain more familiarity with the sourdough baking process, appreciate the distinct qualities of different grains, and further my understanding of the cycles of fermentation- both in my starter and in dough. Even without this year-long project, this would have been my most bread-centric year yet. I began folding, shaping, scoring, and baking off loaves at my job and the learning opportunities were endless. I got to put my hands on dough everyday: feel the gluten strengthen with each fold, try to figure out how much tension to create while shaping, and determine how deeply to score a loaf based on its proof. I tried to bring these lessons into my home baking this year, and I look forward to continuing to grow as a bread baker.
I thought I’d share my experience with these 12 loaves because I love talking about bread and have learned so much from and been so inspired by bakers who have shared their own challenges and successes with sourdough. Some of these recipes are amazing! And the best part about bread is sharing it with others. So here you go!
By the numbers, this year’s sourdough bread baking included:
7 different flours: buckwheat, rye, whole wheat, spelt, white bread, semolina, and all purpose
4 different spices: coriander, fennel, black pepper, and turmeric
5 kinds of seeds: poppy, flaxseeds, sunflower, sesame, and pumpkin
1 herb: thyme
3 kinds of cooked grains: wild rice, grits, and wheat berries
2 types of nuts: almonds and walnuts
and 4 fruits: apricots, figs, raisins, orange peels
1. Pan Integral, Bryan Ford: This was a great loaf to start off the year. Bryan Ford writes in his book, New World Sourdough, “pan integral is bread made with a significant amount of whole wheat flour.” In this case, the loaf is 80% whole wheat, 10% all purpose, and 10% rye. I love any reminders of all the variety that is found within grains, so the ways the whole wheat and the rye contributed to the flavor of this loaf really excited me. That earthy tang is so strong, only made better with butter and a little salt. I also appreciate the robust crust on this bread- it shattered with each bite, but still provided a toothsome chew. I love this recipe. I’ve made it twice now and am interested to keep baking it, perhaps upping the hydration with each bake.
2. Golden Raisin Coriander, Tartine: I was intrigued by the flavor combination of this one, as I really love baked goods that toe the line between sweet and savory. I think my starter was not quite ready for this bake, as the loaf was very very dense and the bake itself took quite a long time. I think the issue stemmed from my feeding schedule, as I only fed my starter once before using it for a levain after neglecting it for several weeks. Lesson learned from this one: if you feed your starter irregularly, give it a couple feedings before using it to make bread. All that aside, I enjoyed eating slices of this loaf, toasted and with butter. The combination of coriander with the jammy golden raisins worked really well. I’d definitely like to make this again, this time with a healthy and happy starter.
3. Sesame Spelt Sourdough, Tartine Country Loaf Variation: Part of my vision for this project was to riff on tried and true recipes and learn more through experimentation. I got to do that with this variation of Tartine’s Country Loaf, the sourdough bread recipe I’ve made the most. I replaced the whole wheat flour with spelt and added toasted sesame seeds. I was pinched for time on this bake, so I baked it after a 4 hour ferment at room temp. The result was a slightly dense loaf with great sesame flavor. I’d love to try it with a longer, cooler fermentation.
4. Seeded Turmeric and Leek Loaf, Sarah Owens: I can confidentially say that this was my favorite loaf I baked this year. No other bread was quite as visually striking and the flavors melded so well together. This bread certainly made my kitchen smell the best of any loaves- a floor that is very high to begin with, but it is noteworthy just how wonderful my kitchen smelled long after the loaves were out of the oven. This recipe had a lot going for it as it is from one of my favorite bread books, Sourdough by Sarah Owens. I spent many afternoons on my couch perusing this book, enchanted by the seasonally inspired, whole grain recipes for sourdough breads and other treats. I felt myself grow a lot as a baker by studying this book. The recipes are divided by seasons, and this recipe in particular felt especially in-tune with early spring. Alliums- leeks and shallots in this case- and seeds are the stars of early spring and the yellow glow of the dough from the turmeric hints at the warm, sunshiny days to come. The ribbons of leeks slightly sautéed in olive oil kept the loaves moist and lush for days after being baked. I really cannot say enough good things about this bread.
5. Wild Rice, Herb (Thyme) and Almond Levain, Sarah Owens: This bread was from another recipe that feels so perfectly tied to a specific season, and this time, that season is fall. I loved the texture of the loaf with the added grains and the nuts, and the flavor the thyme added was subtle but crave-able. I would love to try baking this bread with sage in addition to thyme on my next go. This loaf also inspired me to incorporate other types of cooked grains into my bread- the possibilities are endless and the potential for fun textures is so exciting!
6. Spelt Seed Berry Loaf, Tartine Country Loaf Variation: There is a pretty clear line from Loaf #5 to this one. I loved the idea of a loaf with more than one form of wheat in it, and in this case, those are flour and wheat berries! I added some spelt flour for a little nuttiness as well as sunflower and sesame seeds for texture and flavor, and the Spelt Seed Berry Loaf was born. I loved every bite of this bread, but see room for further experimentation! Maybe next time I’ll also add flax seeds or sprout the wheat berries a couple days in advance. I love my Spelt Seed Berry Loaf.
7. Buckwheat Fruit and Nut Loaf, Roxana Jullapat: Before working at the bakery I worked at for the last two years, I was hesitant to try a loaf of bread with fruits and nuts in it. It just wasn’t a grouping of ingredients that excited me. But at work I found myself surrounded with beautiful loaves, studded with one or two fruits and complimented by toasted nuts (two different variations a week!). My favorite combination from work was a loaf with blueberries, candied orange peel, and walnuts. So when I opened Roxana Jullapat’s cookbook, Mother Grains, and found a fruit and nut loaf that had figs, golden raisins, candied orange peel, walnuts, and also used buckwheat flour, I was excited. I will say, I struggled with this recipe. There seemed to be too many inclusions for the dough to hold itself together and shaping was near impossible. So I tried my best, and plopped two masses of dough and fruit into two loaf pans and hoped for the best. The result was two extremely dense, but extremely tasty, loaves. I gave one away and ate slices of the other with almost every meal for the next two days (that’s how long it lasted!). I’d love to revisit this recipe or take inspiration from it to make a loaf with a lighter crumb, but with the same wonderful flavors.
8. Country Rye, Tartine: I’ll quote myself in my Instagram caption on this one: “the tang in this country rye loaf is unmatched!” I really enjoyed eating this bread, despite its deflated shape. I struggled with shaping this loaf, as the sharp whole rye flour made the dough stickier to the touch. Additionally, rye is a thirsty flour, so this bread was a higher hydration than I traditionally make. These factors made this dough more difficult for me to shape, but that’s why we try new recipes! For the challenge! Baking this loaf aligned with the beginning of my bread shaping training at work and this dough is really similar to the one I struggled the most with, for similar reasons. At work, I learned the importance of being confident with difficult doughs and that while it’s something folks say in passing as a joke, the phrase “the dough can sense fear” does have some truth to it. It was hard for me to be a complete novice at something so publicly in the kitchen- shaping one or two loaves at home is quite a different experience than scaling and shaping dozens and dozens in a commercial kitchen. But curiosity and love for the bread outshone all the frustrations, and I look forward to making this bread again and showing the dough who’s boss.
9. Seeded Danish Rye, Roxana Jullapat: This loaf is a very close second in the contest for my favorite loaf of the year. I made this in the midst of a very concentrated period of baking with rye flour (my “Rye Era,” if you will). I enjoyed this bake so much because it was unlike any sourdough bread baking process I’d experienced thus far. The process demonstrated to me just how much there is to learn about bread and how much variation there is between flours. The finished product tasted great with so many different flavors: I ate it with mashed avocado and sea salt, cream cheese, butter and jam, and a crispy fried egg. I just love the sour tang rye brings to bread and I’m excited to gain a better understanding of its properties through baking more loaves such as this one.
10. Bloody Butcher Grit Loaf, inspired by Loaf Bakery’s Polenta Loaf: I tried, and that’s what matters! Not that this bake was a failure by any means, but there is definitely room for improvement. One of the most popular loaves from the bakery I previously worked at is a Polenta Loaf, made with a coarse polenta soaker and white flour. The dough was my favorite to work with- so creamy and lush, with a faint smell of corn from the partially cooked polenta. Attempting to make a version of it at home, I made my own soaker using local grits from red corn and incorporated it into the dough after the first series of folds. Shaping was difficult, which made me wonder if I overwhelmed the dough with the grits. But the bake resulted in a tasty loaf with great oven spring. I’m excited to keep playing with this one.
11. Semolina Bread, Tartine: Wow did I love this loaf! I’m late to Team Fennel and in a way I feel like I’m making up for lost time, which is one reason I was drawn to this recipe. The dough was loaded with seeds- sesame, poppy, and fennel- and it was my first time baking with semolina flour, another aspect of this recipe that intrigued me. When I first began hand-mixing the dough, the flour and water combination felt so different from any other I’d mixed before and that made me nervous. But throughout the bulk fermentation, the dough came together and I loved how silky the dough began to feel. While I enthusiastically ate every bite of this loaf, I do think I would make some changes the next time I make this bread. I found the crumb to be quite dense and maybe that stems from the bulk or overnight fermentation, but I’d like to see if increasing the hydration opens it up a bit. Additionally, I think I’d reduce the portion of seeds added to the dough, just so each bite gives the flour itself more of a chance to shine.
12. Spelt, Rye, and Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread, The Perfect Loaf: You had me at “spelt, rye, and whole wheat!” This was the first loaf I made after an extensive sourdough baking hiatus, taken due to burnout and travel, and it was such a wonderful first bake back. I love reading the posts and recipe write-ups on The Perfect Loaf, but I haven’t made many of his recipes. This recipe is full of whole grains and appealed to me because I still feel like I’m in the early stages of my flour education. On top of that, I’m currently in possession of beautiful North Carolina-milled spelt and whole wheat flours (from Red Tail Grains). Because of the whole grains, this loaf had a higher hydration than I am used to, but surprisingly that did not create the challenges in shaping that I anticipated. In my cold kitchen, I struggled to reach the desired dough temperature for this loaf, so I was anxious to see how the bake turned out. I was pleasantly surprised by a decent rise (for a loaf with so many whole grains) and a tender crumb. The flavor is great- earthy from the rye and the spelt and deliciously tangy. I’d love to revisit this one and continue learning.
I learned so much from this year of bread baking, and I’m looking forward to all the bread, flour, and dough lessons to come in the next year. Through all these 12 new loaves, and all of the other recipes I baked this year, one thing remained constant: there is absolutely nothing that compares to that first bite from a freshly baked loaf of sourdough bread.