Whole Grain Sourdough Bread
Whole grain sourdough bread is our everyday loaf — a naturally leavened mix of sifted and whole grain wheat with a crackly crust and a soft, open crumb. It’s built around a slow overnight rise in the fridge, which does most of the work for you and deepens the flavor. Here’s exactly how I make it, step by step.
New to sourdough? Start with our beginner sourdough bread — your first loaf, with one flour and a lower hydration that’s far easier to read while you’re still learning the signals. Come back to this one once that feels routine.
Whole Grain Sourdough Bread
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Feed your starter the morning you bake (or the night before) so it's lively when you mix — it should be domed, bubbly, and float in water.
- Mix the dough. In a large bowl, whisk the starter into the lukewarm water to loosen it. Add all three flours and mix by hand until no dry flour remains — you'll have a shaggy, sticky dough. Hold the salt back for now. Cover and rest 1 hour at room temperature.
- Add the salt. Sprinkle it over the dough and work it in thoroughly, squeezing and folding until fully incorporated. The dough will tighten up slightly.
- Stretch and fold — every 30 minutes, at least 4 times. With a wet hand, grab one side of the dough, stretch it up, and fold it over the center; turn the bowl a quarter turn and repeat around the whole dough (four pulls = one set). Cover, rest 30 minutes, repeat. Over these 2 hours the dough goes from slack and shaggy to smooth, elastic, and airy.
- Bulk ferment until risen. After the folds, cover and let it rise at room temperature until it's grown by about 30–50%, looks domed and jiggly, and shows bubbles on top and along the sides. Depending on your kitchen this is roughly 4–6 hours total from mixing — warmer is faster, cooler is slower. Watch the dough, not the clock.
- Shape. Tip the dough onto a lightly floured surface and fold it into a taut round (or oval), pulling it toward you against the counter a few times to build surface tension. Dust the shaped dough with rice flour — it resists sticking far better than wheat flour and gives the cleanest release.
- Into the banneton. Line your proofing basket with a cloth and dust it generously with rice flour, then set the dough in seam-side up. The cloth and rice flour together are what stop the dough from sticking to the basket.
- Cold retard overnight. Cover and refrigerate 12–16 hours. The slow, cold rise builds flavor and firms the dough so it's easier to score and springs higher in the oven.
- Preheat, hot. About 45–60 minutes before baking, heat the oven as hot as it goes — around 250°C / 480°F — with two trays inside: your perforated baking tray (or a regular baking sheet) on the middle rack, and an empty metal roasting tray on the rack below. The baking tray needs to be properly hot before the loaf lands on it; the roasting tray is what makes your steam. Both metal, never glass — glass can shatter when the water hits it.
- Turn out and score. Turn the cold dough out onto a sheet of parchment, seam-side down. Score the top with one confident slash using a bread lame or sharp blade — this controls where the loaf opens up.
- Bake with steam. Slide the loaf, still on its parchment, onto the hot baking tray on the middle rack — parchment and all, in one quick movement. Immediately pour about 1 cup of just-boiled water into the hot tray below (stand back — it steams up fast) and shut the door quickly to trap it. Bake at 250°C / 480°F for 20 minutes. That burst of steam is what gives you a glossy, blistered crust and a big rise.
- Finish in dry heat. After 20 minutes, take the tray out (the water will have boiled off, and you want dry heat now to crisp the crust), drop the oven to 200°C / 390°F, and bake another 15 minutes until deeply golden. To be sure it's done, the loaf should sound hollow when tapped and read 96–99°C / 205–210°F in the center — the most reliable check. Still pale? Give it a few more minutes.
- Cool completely. Lift it out and cool on a wire rack for at least 1–2 hours before slicing. Cutting too early makes the crumb gummy — this last wait matters.
Notes
- Let the fridge do the work. The overnight cold rise does the heavy lifting — better flavor, easier scoring, and a taller loaf. Don’t skip it.
- Weigh, don’t scoop. A digital scale is the single biggest upgrade for consistent sourdough; the cup measures above are approximate.
- Got a Dutch oven? You can bake covered instead: lower the loaf into a screaming-hot pot, lid on, 20 minutes at 250°C / 480°F, then lid off at 200°C / 390°F for the last 15 — no water tray needed.
- Sticky is right. The whole grain flours drink up water, so this is a moderately high hydration dough (~73%). It’ll feel tacky — that’s exactly what you want.
- Rice flour is the trick for proofing baskets — it doesn’t absorb into the dough the way wheat flour does, so the loaf lifts out cleanly and keeps a crisp pattern.
About the flour (and how to make it outside Norway)
This is a landhvete loaf — a Norwegian heritage wheat with a lovely nutty depth. It’s about half sifted flour and half whole grain, which keeps the crumb open and light while still giving you real whole grain flavor and fiber.
Landhvete is hard to find outside Scandinavia, so use what your local mill and shop carry: bread flour for the sifted portion, plus whole wheat and a coarse or stoneground whole wheat for the wholemeal. Stoneground flour is worth seeking out — it’s closer to the character of landhvete and tastes noticeably better than standard supermarket whole wheat.
How to tell when it’s ready
The two judgment calls most recipes skip are knowing when the bulk rise is done and when to slice. For the rise, trust the look over the clock: a 30–50% increase, a domed, jiggly surface, and bubbles along the sides mean it’s ready to shape. And once it’s baked, let it cool fully — slicing a hot loaf collapses that open crumb into something gummy. Give it the hour.
Why whole grain sourdough bread handles differently
If you’ve only baked with white flour, this dough will feel like a different animal — and it is. Bran and germ do two things at once. They drink far more water than white flour does, which is why this loaf sits at around 73% hydration and still feels manageable rather than soupy. And the bran itself is abrasive: tiny sharp particles that cut through developing gluten strands as you fold.
That second part is why whole grain loaves rarely rise as tall as white ones, however well you handle them. It isn’t a fault in your technique. A slightly tighter, more even crumb is the honest result of using this much whole grain, and it’s a trade made on purpose — nutty depth and real fiber in exchange for a little height.
It also ferments faster, because the bran carries more of what the wild yeast feeds on. Keep a close eye on the dough toward the end of bulk.
Storing whole grain sourdough bread
Cut side down on a board, no bag, at room temperature. That sounds too simple, but it’s what keeps the crust crisp — a plastic bag traps moisture and turns a good crust leathery within hours.
It’ll be excellent for two days and good for four. Naturally leavened bread keeps far longer than bread made with commercial yeast, because the acidity slows mould down, so there’s no need to rush it.
For longer than that, slice the whole loaf and freeze it in a bag. Frozen slices toast straight from the freezer and lose almost nothing. Freezing the loaf whole works too, but you’ll be defrosting far more bread than you want at breakfast.
How to serve it
This is an everyday loaf, and it’s at its best doing everyday work: butter and a sharp cheese, or the Norwegian standby of brown cheese sliced thin. It’s sturdy enough to carry smoked salmon, boiled egg and cucumber the way an open Scandinavian sandwich should, and it makes better toast on day three than it does on day one.
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