Reach for this Seeded sourdough bread recipe to create a soft but chewy bread loaf that you’ll want to make over and over again! A family favorite, we love using this loaf for sandwiches or to pair with a warm bowl of soup. It’s nutty and flavorful and a great way to expand your sourdough bread journey.

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Why You’ll Love This Seeded Sourdough Bread Recipe

It’s So Good For You

This seeded sourdough recipe is full of healthy whole grains and seeds. Furthermore, using a wild yeast starter breaks down the grains in your bread making them easier for your belly to digest and allowing your body to absorb more nutrients.

Minimal Hands-on time

It takes a day or two to finish a loaf of sourdough bread but the amount of hands-on time is very little. I designed this recipe to work around my life which means long stretches of time when the dough is sitting in a bowl minding its own business. No matter what your schedule looks like, you have time to make great bread!

Simple Ingredients

This recipe calls for simple ingredients: Sourdough starter, water, salt, your seed mixture, and whole grain flour. I’m always amazed by how these basic and economical ingredients can create something so filling, nutrient dense, and delicious.

Flavorful

The combination of seeds adds amazing texture and flavor to our bread loaf. Add to this the subtle tang of a bread leavened with wild yeast, and you have something truly special!

Baking with a Sourdough Starter

If you are new to baking with a sourdough starter, you may be surprised by the amount of time required to make a loaf of bread. My advice is to embrace this, lean on it. While at first it may test your patience, eventually you’ll grow to love how much flexibility this gives you.

You’ll want to make sure your starter is nice and active before making your bread. About 12 hours before you want to bake bread, feed your starter with equal parts water and flour. For example: 100 grams flour and 100 grams water). The final consistency should be similar to pancake batter. Make sure there are no dry clumps of flour. If you mix it together and it seems thin, just add a bit more flour. Too thick, add a bit more water. When feeding your starter, make sure you double the volume so that the natural yeast has enough food to sustain it for 12 hours.

Tips for feeding your starter

Always make sure your starter is kept in a container large enough to allow it to quadruple in size. When you feed it, you will double the volume. Over the next 8-12 hours, it will double again in size. I keep my starter in a quart sized, wide mouth mason jar.
Always add enough flour and water to double the volume of the starter. This ensures your wild yeast has enough fresh food to sustain it for 12 hours.
Sourdough starter should be the consistency of thick pancake batter.
If you feed the starter only as much volume as you need for your recipe, you will never have to discard. Example: I need 100 grams of starter to make a loaf of sourdough bread. If I feed my starter 50 grams of water and 50 grams of flour, I will have 100 grams to use in my bread recipe and will end up with the same amount of starter that I had before I fed it.

Mixing the Ingredients for Seeded Sourdough Bread

This seeded sourdough bread recipe contains simple ingredients: an active sourdough starter, bread flour, water, salt, and a combination of your favorite seeds. A mixture of sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, poppy seeds, quinoa, and flax seeds creates a delicious and beautiful loaf. However, there are endless combinations of seeds. Chia seeds, white sesame seeds, hemp seeds, fennel seeds and any kind of seeds can be used to customize your loaf.

You can make an amazing loaf of bread with just a mixing bowl and your hands! Start by adding water to a large bowl and then adding in your seeds. Let your seeds soak for about an hour to absorb some of that water and soften. After an hour, add in your starter, salt, and flour. Using a fork, Danish Whisk, or your hands, mix everything together until everything is fully incorporated. If the dough feels tough, or there are dry bits of flour, add an additional splash of water. Cover the mixing bowl with plastic wrap or a damp towel and set the dough aside for one hour. As it sits, the flour and seeds will continue to absorb water and the dough will become more pliable and elastic.

Stretch and Fold Method

Stretching and pulling the dough is an efficient way to activate and strengthen the gluten and is so much easier than kneading! To do this, grab an edge of your dough working with wet hands, and stretch it up towards you. I like to anchor the dough with my left hand and pull it up with my right. Stop pulling if you feel like the dough is about to break. When working with seeds, you may not be able to pull very far before your dough feels like it’s about to tear but that’s ok! Fold the dough back over and press it into itself. Turn the bowl a quarter turn and repeat this process for a total of 5-6 times.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a damp kitchen towel and allow your dough to rest at room temperature for thirty minutes. You will perform this series of stretch and folds twice more every thirty minutes. Each time you’ll notice that the dough becomes a little smoother and more pliable and by the last time you’ll have a beautiful and supple dough.

Bulk Fermentation

Seeded sourdough at the beginning of the bulk rise.

After your last stretch and fold, your dough is ready for the first rise which will take 7-10 hours in a 68-72 degree environment. You’ll know your dough has completed the bulk rise when you see air pockets forming under the outside of the dough. It should be about doubled in size and feel light and full of air. Over-proofed dough will rise and then collapse, and your final loaf will turn out dense and overly sour. Alternatively, under proofed dough will feel tight and dense and will result in a small loaf of bread.

Shaping your Seeded Sourdough Loaf

When you’re ready to shape your dough, dump it out of the mixing bowl onto the kitchen counter. Y Gently pat the dough into a rough rectangle on your work surface and shape your loaf using four folds. I start at the back and carefully lift with two hands and fold the back edge 2/3rds over the dough, like and envelope fold. Gently press the edge into the dough to seal. Repeat this with the left edge, then the right edge.

Finish by folding the bottom edge all the way across the dough, flipping it seam side down in the process. Use the edges of your hands or a bench scraper to gently pull the loaf towards you in a circular motion, to seal the seam and create more surface tension. The more surface tension you can build, the better the oven spring will be. Continue until your dough has a nice round shape.

For the final proof, line a medium sized mixing bowl or proofing basket with a tea towel or cloth napkin and dust with rice flour or whole grain flour. If you would like, you can press a mixture of seeds into the top of the dough before placing it in the proofing basket to give it a crunchy crust. I prefer to skip this step. Transfer the dough to the bowl flipping it in the process so that the seam is facing up. Cover and allow to rise for 1-3 hours at room temperature or place in the fridge for 8 hours up to 3 days.

Baking your Seeded Sourdough Bread

Place a Dutch oven or a heavy-lidded pot in the oven and preheat it to 475 degrees. Baking your bread in a preheated Dutch oven or heavy-lidded pot will trap moisture during the beginning half of your bake. This keeps the crust from forming before the bread has a chance to fully rise in the oven. It also allows for a crisper, more artisan crust.

When you’re ready to bake your bread, you’re going to lay out a piece of parchment on the counter and dust it lightly with flour. If I placed my loaf in the fridge for the final rise, I take it out of the fridge about 30 minutes prior to baking. Flip your shaped dough out onto the parchment so that the seam is facing down. Now you can score your bread with a sharp knife however you like. Feel free to experiment with detailed and artistic cuts, but you will want to make sure you score it once from top to bottom, about 1/2 inch deep, to ensure that your loaf doesn’t “pop.”

Note: I recently purchased this reusable baking mat for a Dutch oven to use in place of parchment paper and I absolutely love it! It’s so easy to place your dough into the pot and remove it without parchment tearing!

Carefully remove the pot from the oven and use the parchment as a sling to place the dough carefully into the pot. Replace the lid and bake covered for 20 minutes. Remove the lid and continue to bake for 15-25 more minutes. I always use an instant read thermometer to make sure that my bread is baked to 200 degrees. The loaf should be dark in color and feel light when you remove it from the pot.

Storing your Bread

To keep your sourdough fresh as long as possible, wait until your loaf has cooled completely and store it in a paper bag, bread box, or, the gold standard, a linen bread bag. Sourdough also freezes really nicely, and you may want to divide your bread in half, slice it, and store half in the freezer for later. On the counter your sourdough bread should keep for 3-5 days.

Now that you’ve made the perfect loaf of seeded sourdough bread, your house smells amazing, and you can’t wait to try that first slice! I love using seeded sourdough for toast as it really brings out all the best flavors of your edible seeds and gives everything a nice crunch. I’m supposed to tell you not to cut into your bread until it has cooled completely, but that’s advice I’ve never been able to follow. So instead, I would suggest using this knife (the only knife that will cut through warm bread without destroying it!) and enjoy a warm slice of bread with butter. You’ve earned it!

I hope you love this recipe as much as we do! We love hearing about your baking journey! Leave a comment or tag us on Instagram!

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