Whole-Wheat Country Loaf

When in the last days of December, DH announced that his New Year's resolution was to learn how to bake bread, specifically sourdough bread, I thought I'd look at a whole year of baking and experimenting. First came a white bread with only yeast, then a whole wheat toast (with yeast and sourdough), and then, when he started researching how yeast and sourdough actually worked, I realized that the chapter about bread in this book was exactly what he was looking for. And not only that, he decided to follow the recipe published in the appendix, and the result was great - we've been eating this bread ever since.

This bread works particularly well if you use one part normal white flour, one part whole wheat flour (see photo with the single bread); personally, I also like the version using meergranenmeel, a flour made of wheat flour plus eight ground seeds/grains such as sunflower seeds, linseed, oats and rye (see 2nd photo, bread on the right). It's also a great idea to add things like whole seeds and nuts - I've had a bread with said meergranenmeel with extra whole sunflower seeds and linseeds, one with toasted hazelnuts and linseeds, and a whole wheat bread with (untoasted) walnuts - all worked very nicely, though we never added more than 45g of extra ingredients to make sure the dough doesn't get too heavy.