in this video we'll be making this a beautiful Eastern European style brown bread with lots of fun ingredients to give it a nice deep complexity of flavor and to start you want to make a sponge you're going to have to make this sponge the night before and so you'll be weighing out 350 grams of cold water and to this you'll be adding 100 grams of your poolish sourdough starter and we do have a separate video on how to make a pool of starter if you're unfamiliar with it and you're going to simply stir this together using a wooden spoon now to this you're going to add 250 grams of dark rye flour and also a hundred grams of whole wheat flour you're going to mix this together until it resembles something that looks like mud and then cover with plastic wrap and allow it to ferment overnight or at least 10 to 12 hours now after that 10 to 12 hour fermentation process that's done at room temperature your sponge should look something like this when you take the plastic wrap off you'll notice that it's not super airy like other sponges because the density of your rye flour on your whole-wheat but I sure how some bubbles kind of breaking through the surface on top and that will show you that you have a nice active sponge now you're going to start weighing out the other ingredients and here I have some coffee at 100 grams also 130 grams of warm water 50 grams of balsamic vinegar and here I'm using golden a lot of Eastern European style breads will actually use apple cider vinegar and also 100 grams of molasses for the sweetness but also bilasa has that nice little tang you're going to pour all this into the same container and then mix together thoroughly just using a whisk this is mainly to make sure that the molasses doesn't stick to the bottom of the container and everything is dispersed evenly now once you whisk it together pour this directly into your sponge and you're going to go back with a rubber spatula or scraper and simply just mix all of your liquid into your sponge now once you mix it together and it looks something like this add 700 grams of bread flour and also 20 grams of dark cocoa powder now you're going to mix all the ingredients together until they just form this little shaggy mass just like this and then cover with plastic wrap and allow to auto lease for about 20 to 30 minutes before continuing and we've talked about Auto ways before it's a nice hydration step that allows you not overwork the dough in the meantime measure out 15 grams of salt about 10 grams of fennel seed 5 grams of celery seed and 9 grams of caraway seed and this is my personal preference feel free to add more or to leave something out to fit your own of flavors and needs but this gives a nice little less intense flavour to this brown bread you're going to sprinkle your seasoning and your spices into the brown bread after its auto lease for 20 to 30 minutes and just get your hands in there and mix it all together because you're going to be doing the slap and fold method here in a second so it doesn't really matter if your hands get all goopy and you're going to turn this bread out onto a clean work surface and at this point no additional flour or no nonstick spray we're going to be using the slap and fold method and to do this you're going to pick up the dough while you're stretching it out horizontally and you're going to turn the dough upside down mid air and then slap it onto your work surface and then fold that back half over the front and what's happening is I'm using the stickiness of the dough to my advantage and every time I slap it onto the work surface and then stretching it over on itself and you sort of build up this rhythm to this kneading process where you're slapping and folding slapping and folding and you're going to continue to do the slap and fold until the dough becomes somewhat workable after about every tenth time of slapping and folding you're going to use your bench scraper or a bowl scraper to scrape all the disparate pieces of dough's back into the center of the dough then continue this slapping fold you can see here after about four minutes the dough is starting to become cohesive and easier to work at this point I'm going to take my bench scraper scrape the dough into one singular mass and then lightly dust my work surface with some flour and then this dough will always be sticky because of the rye flour you always want to hand work this dough because the rye flour will get overworked in machine and you're going to dust both sides of the dough with a little bit of flour then move the dough away from the excess flour and perform a simple stretching fold by first stretching out the dough into an elongated shape folding in 1/3 in towards the middle creasing it folding the top third in towards the middle increasing it and then also dub repeating that on both sides of the dough and that final third you're going to stretch over the top and kind of tuck it in underneath and then round the dough and you're going to do this by a couple of cupping turning motions and then also by doing a tension pull as shown here by using your fingers in a cupping motion to drag that dough along the work surface toward you and this is going to give a nice tight surface for the dough to rise against during the bulk fermentation now use your bench scraper to release the dough from the work surface spray a plastic container with some nonstick spray place the dough in the container cover with plastic wrap and allow to bulk ferment for anywhere from two to four hours or until it has nearly doubled in volume now if you're in a hurry you can always speed up the bulk Roman tation process by placing this in an oven that is turned off and then adding to that oven a tray of boiling water and the steam the heat from the water will speed up the bulk fermentation process sprinkle your work surface with some flour use your plastic bowl scraper to get in there and very gently detach the dough from the walls of your proofing container you don't want to overly flatten or D gas sprinkle both sides with flour and now it comes time to portion and preform so you're basically going to divide this dough into three separate portions each portion weighing about anywhere from six hundred six hundred and forty grams and then once you portion each dough you want to do a quick little preform so once you pull the portion of dough off the scale you're basically is going to roll it up like you're making a burrito where you're tucking in the sides and tucking in the ends and then allowing it to rest seam side down one more time I'm just basically rolling it up tucking in the sides tucking in the ends creating a scene and then letting it rest seam side down and this is going to giving my preform now after I let it rest seam side down for about a minute or two I'm going to go back place it seem slide up flatten it out slightly fold in the top third into the middle portion and create a seam and then fold back the last two thirds on to that lower third creating a seam by pinching and crimping and you can go down and use the heel of your hand to seal it as well if you like now you want to do a couple of quick little tension poles as I show here and this is just going to reinforce that seam and make sure that it closes one more time from the front side again you're going to lay seam side up and then fold back one third of the top down the center of the loaf giving it a crease and then folding back the rest of the loaf on to that last bottom third and using your fingertips to tuck in the edges and to crease that seam and then again you're going to lay it seem side down do a couple of quick little tension poles to close that seam to make sure that does not burst during the baking process now you will notice that there is some flour on my work surface which is fine but if there's too much flour and that flour gets into that seam while you're trying to close it it's never going to close properly and it will burst on you during the cooking process now here I'm just basically spraying a couple of nine-inch loaf pans with some non-stick spray or some pain relief spray I'm going to place each portioned loaf into the loaf pan seam side down cover with plastic wrap and allow to proof at room temperature for about one and a half to two hours or until they double in volume and again you can use the steam and oven trick if you want to speed this up now here's how they look like after two hours at room temperature in my kitchen they have pretty much almost grown to about one and a half times to about twice at times in volume and so from here I'm going to brush with a little bit of melted butter and this is optional this just to give me a more tender crust because I want to use this as sandwich spread I don't want a nice thick hard crust so I'm going to brush with butter to give me a tender crust and then using a sharp Baker's razor make an aggressive cut at 90 straight down the center of the loaf I'm trying to cut at least a quarter of an inch to a half an inch deep I'm going to place this into a 350 degree convection oven if you don't have a convection oven raise it to about 375 I'm going to bake this for about 40 to 45 minutes or until the crust is a dark golden brown and the lobes feel light when you turn them out of the loaf pans they shouldn't feel super dense or heavy now you're going to place this on a wire rack to cool for at least an hour and a half or two hours so they cool to room temperature before slicing now once you slice it you're going to have a nice dark rich crumb it looks something like this that's great for toast or sandwiches now make sure any unused portion is wrapped in plastic wrap and store it out of direct sunlight for more information check out this episode shownotes at Stella culinary comm slash sb5