Join us in the Shipton Mill test bakery with our head baker Chris, to learn how to bake sourdough with our flours milled from heritage grains. The white and stoneground wholemeal we’re using in this video here we milled from a harvest of over 150 heritage wheat varieties developed by John Letts of Heritage Harvest, and farmed organically by David Wilson just down the road from us in Tetbury. They need slightly more delicate handling than classic strong white flours for example, but have an extraordinary flavour and create beautiful breads.

If you don’t have these flours you could adapt the recipe using Chris’s tips for working with heritage grains to use it with other varieties, feel free to experiment and adapt, just add the water slowly and get to know the flour you’re working with. Check out the heritage grains section of our website for more inspiration Heritage & Ancient Flours (shipton-mill.com).

Link to video Shipton Mill (@shiptonmill) • Instagram photos and videos

Recipe

Heritage Grain Sourdough

Using a blend of white and wholemeal flours. Some tips on working with these heritage grains:

The gluten in them is more delicate than compared with, for example, a strong Canadian white flour, and the dough needs more gentle handling, and takes less water. It doesn’t work as well if pushed too far with very long fermentation times or high temperatures, so for the best results handle with a bit more care. The crust of this sourdough is slightly crackly, almost like a baguette, rather than chewy, and these two flours create a soft crumb.

Makes one large loaf, 850g

INGREDIENTS

• 375g Heritage white flour
• 125g Heritage wholemeal flour
• 100g sourdough starter
• 340g water, around 40°C
• 10g salt

METHOD

The heritage flour’s gluten is more delicate than modern wheat varieties so make sure your starter is nice and fresh and not too acidic. A very acidic starter will start to break the gluten structure down too early.

Place all your ingredients except the salt into a mixing bowl.

Mix thoroughly until all the ingredients are well incorporated, cover, and leave for 30 minutes to autolyse. Leave the dough in a warm place to try and maintain a dough temperature which is in the mid to high 20s°C.

Next, add the salt and work this well into the dough and then cover and leave for 3-4 hours. Fold the dough every hour – be gentle when folding as you don’t want to tear the dough too much. To do this, imagine 4 sides. Fold the right side to the left, the left to the right, top to bottom, bottom to top.

Make sure you don’t fold the dough just before shaping, so, at hour 3 check the dough and if it still isn’t pillowy enough fold it and leave for another 30 minutes – 1 hour. Once ready, the dough should feel nice and light and have increased in volume by about a third.

Tip it out on to a lightly floured work surface and shape to fit your basket.

Place into a well-floured basket (the best is a mix of white flour and rice flour to prevent sticking) and leave out for 30 minutes – 1 hour before placing in the fridge overnight.

The next morning, preheat the oven and casserole pot/ Dutch oven to 250°C for at least 30 minutes.

Flip the loaf out of the basket on to some parchment paper and score.

Lift it into your hot casserole pot using the parchment and place in the oven for 20 minutes.

Remove the lid and continue to bake for 15-20 minutes at 220 – 230°C until you get the desired colour for your crust. Place on a wire rack to cool.