Sourdough Boney Bread

I have no idea why, but growing up we used to refer to grainy bread as "boney bread". I still use the name today. Boney bread was something my maternal grandmother always bought, along with other interesting bread like pitas and pocket breads. Boney bread was always my favourite, and for ages now I've been wanting to add seeds to my sourdough baking. I haven't been able to find a suitable seed mix though - they all seem to contain kibbled soy, which I won't touch for reasons that are too long for this blog post.
Last week, however, my Mum produced a bag of mixed seeds that she'd picked up at our local health food shop, that for once was soy free. The joy I felt at the sight of those seeds made me wonder if I was part parrot.

Being someone who likes to research things thoroughly before trying something new, I spent all of five minutes on google looking for advise in adding seeds to bread before deciding that seeds aren't that complicated and I might as well wing it. The only good tip I picked up was that if the seeds aren't properly soaked, they can dry out the bread even after baking. The idea of a nice fresh loaf of bread being as dry as week old bread inside due to thirsty seeds was very unappealing, so I soaked the seeds for just over two hours before adding them to my loaf.
I used my usual, everyday spelt sourdough recipe (you'll find it as The Master Recipe in my eBook), proved it overnight and opted for baking in a tin. I still haven't got myself a proper bread tin (slack, I know!) so you will notice that the loaf in the pictures doesn't have straight sides.
I sprinkled more seeds on top before baking which made the loaf smell absolutely heavenly during baking.

The end result?

I'm happy to say I got it right first time. The perfect amount of seeds for me, obviously soaked long enough as the crumb was perfect too, and the ones added on top gave it an extra depth of flavour and texture.
Spelt sourdough boney bread is very likely to become the next Big Thing, in this kitchen at least.

How about in your kitchen? Do you like seeds in your bread?


Subscribe to receive posts via email and never miss out again