Wholegrain Seeded Loaf

wholegrain seeded batard
On a quest for the perfect wholegrain loaf, I went on the hunt for wholegrain flour.

Note: I refer to wholegrain flour, with actual lumpy whole grains in it.

Wholemeal flour is milled from the whole grain, but it just so happens that Late Developer aka Dough Nuts aka his real proper name which he might tell you if you ask him nicely, wanted to find a recipe with actual whole grains in it.

I personally, have never been a fan of the granary loaf. I think that stems from childhood, when the only granary bread we ate was the bought stuff: an otherwise perfectly soft loaf in which awful surprise hard bits lurked.

So, granary hasn't been at the top of my To Do list, but since the request for whole grain was made...

My local supermarket (one beginning with S and ending in "ury's") stocked only two types of whole grain flour. One was Allinson's Country Grain and the other was own-brand Wholegrain Seeded.

This recipe involves the Wholegrain Seeded version but I've no doubt you could substitute any wholegrain or, indeed, wholemeal flour instead.

Because I find 100% wholemeal bread rather heavy going, I decided to use 50% strong white flour, to balance things out.

Thus, I bring you:

Wholegrain Seeded Loaf (Actually, I made a batard* but that's a whole nother story. If in doubt, pop it in a 2lb loaf tin and it'll do just fine)
*Careful with the autocorrect if you ever need to type that one.

250g/8 oz/1½ cups wholegrain seeded flour
250g/8 oz/1½ cups strong plain flour
1 tsp instant dried yeast
2 tsp salt
315g/10 fl oz/1⅓ cups water

In hindsight, I would have sprinkled in an extra handful or two of mixed seeds because the seed-effect was diluted by the addition of the white flour. As it is, the loaf was tasty but not especially seed-flavoured.

Mix it all together as usual and knead the dough on a clean surface for about 10 minutes until it looks like this:

wholegrain seeded batard dough

Leave it to rise for about 45 minutes or until it has doubled in size.

When you return to the dough, give it a quick knead and make it into your loaf shape.

The loaf pictured above is a batard, which is like a fat baguette with pointy ends. I am working on the dough shaping tutorial to enable you to make fancy-shaped loaves too, but if you're new to all this, please just make a loafish shape and pop it in a tin.

Let the dough prove until it has doubled in size before baking at 230oC/450F for five minutes then 180oC/360F for 30 minutes (that's if it's in the tin - slightly less for a batard).

A properly cooked loaf sounds hollow when you bang on its bottom.

Now, I suppose you already know this but...

All* my recipes are now available in a convenient recipe card format. You can save it to your ebook reader, print from it or use it on screen without all the scrolling that comes from sifting through a verbose website in which someone will insist on waffling on about their children(!)
*OK, sometimes it's not totally up to date, but it is updated regularly and you will always have access to the latest edition.

The Flickr collection is growing nicely. I'm delighted to have lots of excellent photos of the things people have been making, following my recipes. The more the merrier!


  1. Life has been a bit hectic over the last couple of days but it's settled down now so I will be having a bash at this recipe tomorrow - very much looking forward to trying it out (I'm also going to have a go at carrot cake as well). Many thanks for your efforts which, hopefully, will enable me to follow in your footsteps and turn out a good granary loaf after my recent failure to make one!!

  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

  3. OK, I have made two small loaves. Just tried a slice off the end of one of them, it's first class - light, crusty, great taste and just what the doctor ordered (literally!), excellent recipe, thoroughly recommend it - I just added some poppy and pumpkin seeds, 25g of each. I'm still not too hot on the artistic stakes yet - must try harder but I'm confident I'll get there with a bit more practise and the aid of your video-to-be on shaping bread - very much looking forward to that.

    NB the comment removed above was this one but without the typos!

    1. Great result! I'm really pleased! Are we going to see pictures?

  4. I'm too embarrassed about the lumpiness of the bread to send pictures!!

    1. Haha! Think of it as 'rustic artisan' bread ;o)

  5. Hi, have been using your recipe and it works beautifully. i bake it in a loaf. Off late however the bread is splitting on on side or sometime on both the sides to the length. Any thoughts on what could be going wrong?



    1. Hi Ashish,

      Glad you're enjoying the baking!

      I wonder if your problem is what I call 'the lid lifting effect'? I wrote an article about it here:

      Hopefully, you can read a solution there.

      If it's not that, could you email (see Contact page) me a photo and I might be able to tell?

      Hope that helps!

      Rachel x