100% Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread

A simple four ingredient whole wheat sourdough bread, made with purely whole grain flour. It’s a delicious, flavourful, and wholesome loaf!

While we have a 25% whole wheat sourdough already on Baked, and our sprouted grain sourdough is made with over 40% whole grains, this pure whole wheat sourdough is a first. And it’s good.

Using all whole wheat flour makes for a nutty, ultra flavourful loaf, and one that can really hold up to any toppings you can throw at it. Strong cheese, spicy jams, cured meats – anything that might overwhelm a white-flour loaf.

This loaf isn’t as light and airy as an all white flour sourdough bread, due to the bran content cutting the gluten strands. If you like a slightly denser loaf, with a tighter crumb (great for sandwiches!) this is your bread.

Jump to:

• Ingredients
• Method
• Tips and Notes
• Substitutions
• Recipe

Ingredients

Method

Two Nights Before

Make the levain: Take out about 1-2 tablespoon of your starter from the fridge and mix it with 50g of room temperature water and 50g of flour (sifted bread flour, whole grain, spelt, or a combo – whatever you prefer as long as the flour to water ratio is 1:1).

Cover the bowl with a plate and leave it on the counter to ferment overnight for approximately 8-12 hours.

One Day Before

Once your levain is ready, combine all of it with 350g of the water. Add the flour to the water mixture and, and using your hands, mix to combine.

Once the dough is mixed, cover with a tea towel and let it sit at room temperature for 40 minutes to rest.

After the elapsed 40 minute of resting time is up, add the salt and remaining 25g water. Mix well until combined then cover with the tea towel and let the mixture sit for 30 minutes.

Do the first fold: To do this get your hands damp and reach under the dough on the opposite side of the bowl from you. Pull the dough up and over towards you. Here’s a whole post on how to stretch and fold sourdough. Complete 6 more folds (one fold every 30 minutes) for 3 hours total.

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Shaping the dough: Begin by taking the dough out of the bowl and letting it rest on the counter for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, prepare your banneton by dusting it with flour, or layer a clean tea towel in a medium mixing bowl and dust liberally with flour (50-50 wheat flour and rice flour is a great dusting combo).

Shape your dough making sure you get as much surface tension as possible without tearing the outside of the loaf. Once shaped, turn the loaf into the lined and floured bowl or banneton (top-down, seam side up). Gently flour the top (previously the bottom) of the dough before covering with the edges of the tea towel. Set in the fridge overnight.

Day of Baking

The next day, your bread should be almost doubled in size. Place your dutch oven in the oven and preheat to 260°C (500°F) or as hot as your oven can go, but no higher than 500’F. After the oven has come to temperature, let the dutch oven continue to preheat for another 30 minutes.

Once the dutch oven has been preheated, take your bread out of the fridge. Gently invert the dough onto a piece of parchment paper that will be large enough to lift your bread into and out of the dutch oven. Gently score the bread with a sharp knife or bread lame.

Using oven mitts, carefully remove the dutch oven from the oven, take off the lid and then carefully lift the dough into the pot using the parchment paper.

Using oven mitts, carefully place the lid back on the dutch oven and put the entire dutch oven back into the heated oven. Reduce the heat to 230°C (450°F) and bake for 25 minutes.

Carefully remove the lid (be careful of steam) and bake for another 20 minutes with the lid off. Remove the pot from the oven and carefully lift out the loaf using the edges of the parchment paper and let cool completely on a wire rack.

Tips and Notes

As with any sourdough bread, it must cool completely before slicing to avoid gumminess. With whole grain recipes, this is even more important, and we encourage leaving the loaf for at least 12 hours before slicing.

This recipe isn’t more difficult or advanced compared to a purely bread flour sourdough, but it will result in a different loaf. There won’t be as a great of an oven spring and the bread won’t be as tall – these are typical for whole grain loaves and definitely not a bad thing. As mentioned below, if this is an issue, you can sub a higher gluten flour.

You can also bake this in a bread tin. Follow this recipe, but using the directions for our pan loaf, if you don’t have a dutch oven or prefer a square slice.

Substitutions

If you don’t feel confident with all whole wheat flour, you can certainly sub in some all-purpose or bread flour to the mix. We love red fife wheat flour here, for a really excellent flavour, but any kind of WW will work. Use up to 250g of white or bread flour for an easier to work with loaf.

Try adding some nuts or dried fruits to the mix after you’ve made the loaf once or twice. Cranberries, raisins, walnuts, anything like that is great with the more complex flavour in this recipe!

More Great Sourdough Loaves

Everyday No-Knead Sourdough Bread
Cinnamon Raisin Sourdough Bread
Sourdough Sandwich Bread
Gluten Free Sourdough

If you make this recipe, let us know by tagging @baked_theblog + #bakedtheblog on Instagram! We love to feel like we’re in the kitchen with you.