Baking Bouchon - Recipe 48: Multigrain Bread

I'm way behind on the bread recipes in this cookbook.  I've made 5 so far, but I still have 9 left... rye, sourdough, pain palladin, pain rustique, whole wheat-pecan, vegetable baguettes, nanterre and pain-au-lait and dutch crunch baguettes.  That's a lot of bread, especially considering I only have one recipe left in the pate a choux chapter (cheese puffs, which I'm pretty pumped about but I feel weird finishing a chapter when there are 9 breads still to bake).

I suspect I haven't made as much bread because I'm not sure what to do with all of it.  CA and I don't eat much bread and it's weird to bring a loaf of bread to work to share.  I feel like my coworkers would think I was a total weirdo if I showed up and sent out an email to tell them there was multigrain bread in the food cube.

The recipes in the book usually make two loaves so we usually eat one (or part of one before it gets moldy) and freeze the other one.  I currently have two loaves of bread sitting in my freezer with no immediate plans to use them.  We just can't seem to eat enough bread.

Enough about bread in general, now to this bread.

This is my favorite bread so far and it has everything to do with all the variety of flours and grains in it.

This bread not only has regular, whole wheat and rye flour in it, it also has oats, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, flax seeds and quinoa in it.  While I'm keenly aware that bread with whole grains is healthier for me, the reason I eat more whole grain bread than white bread is because I think it tastes better.
I'm not kidding.  I actually like the nuttier, grittier flavor of whole grain bread to white bread.  Not that I'd turn down a beautiful warm baguette with a big slab of butter on it - but if you put that in front of me next to a slice of bread with all kinds of seeds and nuts and stuff in it I'd pick the seedy bread every time... provided it also came with butter.

Making this bread requires that you soak all the seeds and nuts for an hour (so that they're not rock hard) and then add them to the dough after it is kneaded.  Apparently you add the "soaker" after kneading so that it doesn't interfere with the development of gluten in the dough which would result in a flatter, denser bread. 

I should rewrite that last sentence to read that you should add the soaker after kneading because of science.

This bread is definitely my favorite so far in the book.  However, there are so many more breads left that I have no idea if it will hold that record when I'm done with this chapter.  Especially since I have no idea what most of the remaining breads even are... pain palladin, pain rustique, pain-au-lait... it sounds like a big pain.

I know that was nerdy.

Enjoy!
Julie