Fresh Milled Flour Sourdough, and how to Make it Taste Amazing

Sourdough, but Make it Healthy

OK, before you run to the comments, hear me out. I know your Kirkland organic AP sourdough is easy to digest. Milling flour fresh and using the whole thing- germ, bran and sperm, was the standard for most of history. Your organic bread may be cleaner and easier to digest, but it’s missing a few key things that milling can add to. Using fresh milled flour brings back all that lost fiber, and vitamins/minerals that can be tricky to find in other food sources. Bonus– once you try the flavor of some fresh quality wheat made right, you get a bit hooked! Maybe you’re a sourdough pro but a fresh milled flour novice — or just the opposite, either way, stick around and I’ll show you how I make nutritious and tasty artisan loaves.

What we Need Before we Start:

• Sourdough Starter– I like to use rye for mine, Here’s a post breaking down how to get one going
• wheat berries– I like spelt and hard white for sourdough, and Azure is my favorite source for grain
• grain mill — if you are just starting out check out what I use and recommend here
• Dutch oven or baking stone– (a flipped over baking sheet will do too). We just need something to cook our loaf on in the end).
• proofing baskets– These are the ones I use. They have gone down in price with the surge of bread baking and are useful to have!
• salt– we all have this on hand I’m sure, but you can’t forget it (trust me I’ve made that sad mistake before!).
• egg– adds extra protein to our dough to give the gluten some good structure. This helps a lot when using FMF.
• optional – Vital Wheat Gluten. I like it when I’m trying to make an extra “beautiful” loaf, but it is not necessary if you want to omit
• mixing bowl/ stand mixer if not mixing by hand. I switched to an Ankarsum when I moved to FMF and its really great, check out my review here.
• Sifter– Don’t roll your eyes at me, I know it’s a pain. We will sift out the good stuff, and then add it back in later!
• kitchen scale— precision matters, get one!
  

What I do Different, and why it Matters for Fresh Milled Sourdough

Part of me wants to tell you to just make a loaf with fresh milled flour like you would regualr flour and pretend it’s all the same. Honestly if you do that and you’re a pretty good sourdough baker then you’re probably going to end up with a pretty amazing loaf still. I’m a bit of a snob and if I want a quick loaf I’m going to use comercial yeast and call it a day. My sourdough loaves are a delicous work of art. The first thing we need to look at is hydration. When we use whole wheat the grian is “thirstier” so youre going to want to use 90% ish hydration. If I’ve already lost you, for me that looks like using 900g of liquid (egg included) for 1000g of (sifted) flour. Another thing I’m going to do here is an overnight autolyse. Sometimes confused with a fermentolyse (water, flour, starter). Our autolyse is going to be our sifted flour and water (plus egg) mixed together and left to “soak” for at least two hours.*

To Sift, or not to Sift

Sifting is such a spicy topic in the Fresh Milled flour forums. Many make the case that it defeats the purpose, and they arent wrong! Why go through all the work of milling if you’re going to take out the bran/germ anyway? What I like to do with my sourdough is sift the flour ( I reccomend a 40 mesh and not finer or you will sift out too much). The bran and the germ are very nutritious, but they also act like little knives breaking apart the gluten strands you’re trying to develop. I’ve found that if I sift out my brand/germ, even loosely, I can add them back in as an “inclusion” during my lamination stage, and the result is a nice airy open crumb, with all the good stuff added back in.

*schedule tip— I like to start this in the evening after feeding my starter. When I wake up in the morning I have fully developed gluten and a ready to use starter, it makes me feel like I skipped a few steps.

Let’s Make Some Fresh Milled Sourdough

Step 1: Get ready for Dough day

Before its bread day, we are going to feed our starter. I like to feed mine at a 1:5:5 ratio, heres what that looks like:

• 20 grams of hungry starter, 100g fresh milled flour, 100g filtered water, mix and let sit until peak. (will vary based on ambient temp but I like to shoot for an overnight rise of the starter).

Now we prep our flour. I like to use spelt and hard white, a lot of people like hard red and kumat! Here’s how:

• grind flour, enough for 1000g of sifted flour. You can sift all or some, but set aside what you take out and don’t include it toward your final weight. This will be used as an “inclusion” later on.
• Start autolyse. Mix up the sifted flour, 900g. filtered water, egg, and 10g of Vital wheat gluten (if using). Do this at least 1 hour before starter peaks. It’s ok if its a little after, I use already fallen starter and get great results. It just depends on how strong and healthy your starter is. If using a mixer this should take about 3-5 minutes. We aren’t looking for windowpane here since the autolyse will help the gluten develop on its own.

Step 2: Dough Day

1. Once we have had our autolyse, it is time to add in 200g of starter at peak or just past. mix for about 3-4 minutes in the mixer, and start a 30 minute rest. Also called the fermentolyse and is the official start of bulk fermentation.
2. add in 20g of salt and mix well. Make sure it is well incorperated throughout the dough. rest for 30 minutes.
3. From here we are going to do two sets of stretch and folds, resting for thirty minutes inbetween each.
4. Lamination: Not everyone does this step but I like to as it gives the dough a lot of strucure and strength, heres how:

• empty dough onto large clean surface, the kitchen table works great for this.
• slowly pull the sides out form the middle to the edge, working all around the dough. we want it as stretched and thin as possible without tearing.
• once the dough is stretched out I like to gently flap each side a bit against the table, and then slowly fold it over itself back into a dough ball.
• remove dough to bowl and let sit (covered) for thirty minutes.

5. coil folds– preform 2-3 sets of gentler coil folds 30 minutes apart.

Shaping, Bench Rest and Cold Retard (overnight)

1. oil surface if worried about sticking and empty dough onto counter. divide into two equal balls (weigh if you want it perfect, I just eyeball it).
2. second lamination: this time when the dough is stretched out you will sprinkle half of the set aside bran and germ evenly over the dough. then fold dough over itself and precede with a final shape. I like to sprinkle the banneton with some of the bran germ before gently placing the dough in. repeat this with the second loaf and let the loaves sit for 5 minutes before stitching them together to help hold shape.
3. After this you will let them sit out on the counter until finished proofing, usually about 2-3 more hours, I like to make sure I’m on the edge of over proofing, don’t be a baby, you made it this far, push that fermentation!
4. move dough covered to the fridge for at least 8 hours, but up to 3 days for a cold retard.

Bake Day- We Finally Made it!

1. preheat your oven to 500F, make sure your baking vessel is preheating with the oven.
2. While Oven is preheating pop cold dough into the freezer, I find this makes a more dramatic belly after scoring.
3. once oven is preheated place a loaf (or both) into the oven. If using an open bake method (baking stone or sheet) be sure to toss a handful of ice cubes in for steam.
4. Set a five minute timer, and once its up quickly pull the loaf out to score and return to the oven. I actually scored this loaf with my husbands knife and it turned out so pretty. Don’t worry if you don’t have the “right”. equipment. The five minute score helps so much with Fresh Milled sourdough to get a nice rise and belly.
5. lower the temp to 425 and cook for 20-30 minutes. Check every 5 minutes after you hit the 20 minute mark, all ovens are different it can take longer on some!
6. remove lid to dutch oven (if using) and continue to cook for 10-15 minutes. this can vary by oven so check frequently.
7. let loaf cool on cooling rack for at least one hour before slicing into and enjoy!

Trial and error

Even though Fresh Milled Flour is a process, and sourdough can be a sciecne, I do Find it more forgiving than people let on. Don’t be discouraged if you have a flat loaf or something doesn’t quite turn out. The enviernment has a lot to do with it all and it can take time to play with what you need. This guide was written with an assumption that you know the basics of sourdough. If this felt like a foreign language to you, check out my beginingers guide to sourdough here where I break down some of this a bit more. Happy baking and let me know how this goes for you in comments!
Toni