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Artisan: Pain aux Céréales




Source of Recipe


Christian


Recipe Introduction


By far one of my own favorites, this wonderful bread is soft and light inside, and crunchy and crusty outside. In French, it is called, Pain aux Céréales. Enjoy!




List of Ingredients




3 1/2 cups Whole Wheat Flour
1 tbsp. Sugar
1 to 2 tsp. Salt
1 Packet Dry Active Yeast
1 cup Mixed Unsalted Seeds (any kind, any combination)
Additional 1/2 cup Seeds



Recipe



1. Sift flour into a large bowl. Mix in salt and sugar with hand. Move the ingredients to the sides of the bowl, creating a large "well" (an empty space) in the middle.
2. Pour the yeast into the "well" and pour 1 cup of lukewarm water over the yeast. Sprinkle about 1 tbsp. of flour over top. Wait (about 10 minutes) for bubbles to appear in the yeast.
3. Once the bubbles have appeared, you can start to mix together the ingredients (hands work best) to form the dough. The best way to do this, is to gradually incorporate the flour that is "waiting" on the sides of the bowl. Doing it all at once will be too difficult. So, go bit by bit, if it's too liquid, just add a bit more flour at the end. Once flour is incorporated, add 1 cup of seeds and continue working until they are evenly dispersed. You should finish this "pre-kneading" stage with a round, firm ball of dough. Again, if it's too sticky, add a little more flour.
4. Kneading: remove the bread from the bowl and place on a lightly floured surface. Knead it by pushing your palms into and then turning it one quarter. Keep kneading and doing quarter turns for about 5-10 minutes, or until the bread is supple and non-sticky.
5. Place the bread in a lightly floured bowl and cover with a damp dish cloth. Let it rise for about 1 hour (depends on the room temperature, you want it to be fairly warm). It should double in size.
6. Re-sprinkle a counter top (or other surface) with flour. Prepare a baking pan by lightly oiling and flouring it (or bake on top of parchment paper). With your hands, remove bread and place on floured surface. Punch it down once, hard, with your palms. Now, re-shape it into a ball. Roll the top and sides of ball in rest of seeds (1/2 cup). Put the ball on the baking pan. Cover with dish towel and let rise for about 1 hour. It should double in size.
7. Put in oven at 375°F and bake for 30 minutes (more or less, depending on how much you like it browned).
Voilà!

Tip:

If your yeast doesn't bubble, it's no longer active or you didn't use lukewarm water. You should start over in this case, because the bread will not rise.

Freezing: If you are planning on freezing the bread, only bake it for 20 minutes. Wait for it to cool, then wrap in tin foil, put in a plastic bag and freeze. When you want to serve it, just preheat oven to 400°F, bake inside of foil for 10 minutes and then remove foil and let brown for about 5 minutes.

Variations:

Add anything that you would like to make different kinds of whole grain French artisan bread recipes… raisins, dried cherries, chopped dried apricot, nuts…

You can also go in the other direction and make this bread "sesame seed only" or "poppy seed only"…

In any case, the possibilities for whole grain French artisan bread recipes are endless! So, enjoy your culinary creativity!

Serving Ideas:

The recipe above will make one large, country style round loaf. Of course, you can vary the size of artisan bread recipes. You can cut up the dough and make smaller loaves right before transferring to the baking pan.