Wholemeal and white sourdough with a perfect even distributed crumb!

This recipe use white and wholemeal flour to create a perfect loaf to enjoy at every meal, great for breakfast with butter and jam or as a bed for fluffy scrambled eggs. It's also perfect to serve with some antipasti or toasted and served on the side with soup. We teach you how to make it, you decide how to serve it!

​Ingredients: 

• 350g of strong white flour
• 150g of stoneground wholemeal flour 
• 410g of water​
• 12 g of fine sea salt
• 135g  of active sourdough nice and bubbly 

Method: 

1. Autholyse first!
2. ​In a bowl add all the flour and all the water and mix well for 5 min, until there are no more bits of dry flour and it forms a very shaggy dough. Help your self with a plastic scraper to scrape all the flour from around the bowl. 
3. Keep the dough in the bowl and cover. Let it rest for 1 hour. The autholyse method delivers a dough that’s easier to work with and shape, and give to the loaf a better texture, rise and aroma!   
4. Adding the sourdough and the salt 
5. After one hour of autholyse add the sourdough and give the dough a little stir to incorporate the sourdough. 
6. Finally add the salt in the dough and sprinkle some water on top to help the salt to dissolve better. 
7. Now bring the dough on the work table and give it a fast knead. Knead with the palms of your hands - be energetic and a little fast with your kneading movement. The slower is your kneading movement the stickier your dough will be on the table. Help your self with the scraper if you need! Knead for 4 5 min. 
8. Transfer the dough in a plastic container/bowl and cover. Let it rest for 40 min. 
9. Folding the dough
10. After 40 min of the dough been rested start the folding process. 
11. To fold the dough, grab the dough at one side, lift it up, and fold it over on top of itself. Fold the dough four/five times, moving clockwise from the top of the bowl. Let the dough rest another 40minutes, then repeat.
12. Do this folding process a total of 4 times, every 40min.  The dough will start out very loose, but will gradually become tighter as you continue folding. Between the folds make sure to cover the bowl with the lid or cling film.
13. Prepare the proofing basket
14. Line a bread proofing baskets or clean mixing bowls with clean kitchen towels. Dust them heavily with flour, rubbing the flour into the cloth on the bottom and up the sides with your fingers. Use more flour than you think you'll need! 
    
15. Preshape and final shape​  
16. After 40 min from the last fold transfer the dough on your work surface ( be gentle to avoid deflating the dough) 
17. Shape it into a round by slipping your pastry scraper under the edge of the dough and then scraping it around curve of the dough, like turning left when driving. Do this a few times to build the surface tension in the dough (flour or add a little oil in your pastry scraper as needed to keep it from sticking to the dough). Be careful do not over do this step, if you over do it the tension of the dough will break down, about 6 movements of scraping will do! 
18. If it's not quite a round at this point no worries.  Cover it with a teatowel and let it rest on the work surface for 30 minutes. 
19. After 30 minutes of the dough resting repeat step 17.  This time try to get a nice round shape, dust the dough with flour all around and transfer it to the proofing basket upside down, so the seams from shaping are on top ( basically the bottom of the dough when is on the work surface it will be the top once transfer on the proofing basket) 
20. ​Let it rise!​
21. Cover the proofing basket with a clean plastic bag and let the dough rise for 1 hour at room temperature or until almost double in size.
22. After 1 hour at room temperature move the dough in the fridge. Keep it in the fridge from a minimun of 4 hours to a maximum of 8 hours. 
23. Let's bake it!
24. You can bake the loaf straight from the fridge; you don't need to warm the dough before baking. So t​urn the oven on at 230 C° and place the dutch oven or any other heavy-bottomed pot with lid in the oven 
25. Once the oven reach the temperature your pot or dutch oven will be very hot so carefully take it out (but keep the lid on) 
26. Tip the loaf on top of a piece of parchment paper and using a lame or sharp knife quickly score the surface of the loaves. Try to score at a slight angle, so you're cutting almost parallel to the surface of the loaf; this gives the loaves the distinctive "shelf" along the score line
27. Transfer the dough inside the dutch oven , close with the lid and bake for 35 min.  
28. After 35 min take the lid off and keep baking the bread for a further 25 min at 180 C° or until the crust is nice golden and caramelised ( don't be scared to have some colour on your bread, this is where a lot of the flavor and texture of the crust comes in)
29. Let it cool!
30. Transfer the bread on a cooling rack and let it cool completely, for at least 1- 2 hour. This will improve the aroma and the flavour of your bread as the crumb is still cooking. Enjoy!