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After my flour sifting experiments I sold the Merton Blend loaf at COGS for the first time on 20 July. This loaf had 50% high extraction flour, 25% white flour, 25% wholemeal wheat flour and was hydrated at 80%.
All of Merton Bakery’s bread has some wholemeal flour in it — I don’t make a 100% white loaf — but the Merton Simple only has 15% wholemeal flour (10% wheat and 5% rye) so it’s pretty much as close as I get to a white loaf. Merton Simple is really a classic country style sourdough.
Merton Blend retains the light open crumb structure of Merton Simple but with more bran and wheat germ in it. It’s kind of like what I would have called “brown bread” as a kid, but fermented with sourdough.
I was happy with the loaves (not that I took any photos of them) and thought I’d adjust the recipe slightly and include toasted sunflower and sesame seeds.
To get loaves more or less the same size (750g before baking) I kept the flour percentages the same, but dropped the quantity of flour to make space for the seed inclusions. I guestimated that 15% of total dry flour weight would be about right for the seeds. For a single loaf, this was a little shy of 50g of sunflower and 50g of sesame seeds.
Here’s how they turned out:
sunflower and sesame seed loaf 
sunflower and sesame seed crumb
The loaves were bloody yum.
I’ll bake these for COGS when I next deliver bread there on 24 August 2024.
