Authentic Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread In A Bread Machine!!!

Authentic Sourdough Bread – start to finish – In A Machine!

Yes, dreams do come true.  You can make sourdough bread in a bread machine. I’m here to prove it.

And you can LOVE LOVE your results.

I grew up making homemade bread with my mother.  There is nothing like homemade bread coming out of the oven. Then I became a teenager, young adult and then a young mother and discovered if I didn’t eat bread, it was much easier to maintain my slim figure.  After my family continued to grow… I then started to quickly realize how much easier it would make my life if I simply had bread to offer my growing and ravenous family (5 boys!).

I have done a gluten free diet in the past.   And we have done paleo.  Now we do THM (trim healthy mama).  We love it and it loves us 🙂  It’s the best of all worlds.  They mention how you can use bread in your diet IF it is genuine sourdough bread.  Hard to find and expensive it is to buy from the store.  Check the ingredients, you have to make sure there is ZERO yeast and only sourdough starter in the ingredients to insure that it’s sourdough and not a “tastes like sourdough” bread.

Can I Make Real Sourdough Bread In A Bread Machine?

There were 3 hurdles that I really hoped were possible to overcome:

• I wanted a real sourdough recipe that I could make in my kitchen – that actually tasted good
• I wanted to use 100% whole wheat (to gain full nutritional benefit)
  (*you are welcome to use all-purpose flour in place of whole wheat)
• I wanted to make it start-to-finish in a bread machine

I was stumped at hurdle #1.  It was frustrating.  I couldn’t get my sourdough starter to work for me….THEN, I got my starter from Sourdo, (click on the link and check them out).
Now, I was starting to get somewhere.
I got the San Fran starter.  They have many to choose from, pick any of them.

Then I found this whole wheat sourdough site, explaining that you can do 100% whole wheat sourdough.  I was in disbelief.  I had searched and searched and it was really hard to find anyone saying that was possible.  At best, most “experts” say you can do 50% blend of all purpose with whole wheat.  And this guy offered a sandwich loaf style vs the artisan style.
(I love artisan sourdough, but it’s not as useful for a daily bread for a large, growing, hungry family.)

Third hurdle… can this be done in a bread machine? ? ?
Even though I have many children, homeschool, a husband I feed/cook 3 meals a day for, laundry, and all the other myriad of things a mom of littles must do every day… I was tempted to do homemade bread in my kitchen aid or bosch mixer  – oven style.

WHY?  because I would no longer run out of bread. I would always have something to feed my hungry people.
And it is less expensive than any other food and completely wholesome!

BUT – HOW VERY nice it would be to throw all the ingredients into a bread machine and not worry about burning it in the oven because I decided to take a nap with the kids or run to the park last minute…

Then I discover the Zojirushi Bread Machine.  I bought it with my fingers crossed.

Could my dream of making sourdough bread in a bread machine be too good to be true???

It was the only bread machine that had a “homemade” setting.  This setting let you customize how long you wanted to knead your bread and how long you wanted your bread to rise before baking.  Or you could turn off the bake option and let it rise for a long time in a cooler temp and then decide to bake when you were ready.  The description online, from every source I could find didn’t tell me it could do all those things listed above.  It did say it had a “sourdough” setting, but it was for the “fake sourdough bread” with yeast. 😦

The Zojirushi arrived and I was in heaven.  It makes a traditional looking loaf vs the tall cylinder loaf most of us have seen from the traditional bread machine.

I went to work.  My first loaf turned out, I was amazed!…. but I tweaked and tweaked and pondered and pondered as to why some loaves were better than other.  Some were absolutely PERFECT.  Others were edible.
It took me about 4 months of making bread 3 times a week, before I settled on exactly how to make a predictable loaf.

Finally, here is the recipe – if you want to make Pizza Dough – simply don’t let the bread bake and use the dough for pizza.  It makes wonderful pizza!

 

WHOLE WHEAT SOURDOUGH SANDWICH BREAD
(yes, I did up-my-game and get a scale to weigh the ingredients… makes it precise and NO utensils to clean)

• Put the bread machine pan on the scale, zero out, set to grams
• Pour in 315 grams of sourdough starter (I like mine like pancake batter consistency – see below)
• Zero out scale, pour in 270 grams of warm water
• Again, zero out, pour in 450 grams of ground whole wheat (I grind my own)
• Zero out, pour in
  10 grams of salt
  45 grams of honey
  45 grams of oil

Stick in bread machine.  Set to homemade setting #1. Let knead for 15 minutes.  (when the “add ingredient” beeping starts – I lift the lid and let it sit for 5 minutes. Then I add more flour if needed and shut the lid.  It almost always needs more flour.  Read this guy’s post about making whole wheat sourdough and learn about the “window pane test“.  He also shows pictures of how the dough will look when you are done kneading it.

I turn off the machine.  Turn it back on to setting #1.  Let it knead again for 15 minutes.  So now it will have kneaded for a total of 30 minutes.  If I have a busy day ahead, I leave it alone and it’s done whenever I return.

IF I have the presence of mind and the time and I’m around the kitchen/house…. (*grin*)…  I turn off the machine after it’s done kneading for 30 minutes and check on it in 4-5 hrs.  The machine is a room temp when turned off vs a warming/rising temp when in rise mode.  I think some say it’s best to let it rise 7 hrs to convert all the sugar out of the wheat.  I’ve been happy with my 4-6 hrs rise time.  You could set a kitchen timer for 7 hrs while your machine is off and then hit setting 3 (the just bake option) and let it bake when you tell it too.

This is how I have my custom bread machine setting:

Setting 1 (everything is off except the following)

• knead 15 min
• rise 1 hr
• rise 3 hrs
• bake 55 minutes

Setting 2

• rise 4 hrs
• bake 55 minutes

Setting 3

• bake 55 minutes

**You can play around with these settings.  The first rise is the only one you can do for more than 3 hrs.  The second rise is maxed at 3 hrs.

FEEDING SOURDOUGH STARTER

As for keeping your sourdough starter happy from day to day… I have found it’s easier than I have read on most online articles.

Literally, this is all I do:
– I keep the starter in a wide mouth quart jar with a lid barely screwed on (so it can breathe).
It needs to eat a minimum of once a day.  It has optimum growth if fed twice a day.   And if you need bulk up your supply because you are going to be making bread every day or you want to make bread today and pizza tomorrow, then you can feed it as often as every 3 hrs.

– I feed it a couple heaping spoonfuls (of ground wheat per feeding and add some water.  I don’t measure the quantity of either, I just make sure it’s the consistency of pancake batter.  STIR WELL.

– If you are going to be away or are not going to make bread every couple days, simply stick the starter in the fridge.  Pull it out the day before you want to bake bread.  Feed it a minimum of twice before making bread.  This allows for the starter to be at full power.

 

 

NOTES:

I did the math… I can make a loaf of bread for somewhere between $1.00 – $1.50 a loaf… depending on how expensive your wheat is.  If grind your own, it’s cheaper.  Organic costs more than non-organic. But even with the highest quality of ingredients, all organic… this bread will be the freshest you can get and probably a 1/4 of the price of anything in the store.   #winning

The best priced Organic Wheat Berries are from the Azure Coop.  Easy to join and they deliver once a month all over the country.