A healthy, multigrain seed bread made with whole grains like wheat, rye, oats, buckwheat, and quinoa and tasty pumpkin, sunflower, flax, and sesame seeds.
It’s inevitable. When I go to visit my Dad there’s going to be some food tasting involved. He loves to show me all of his Whole-Foods-Finds. And I’m cool with that most of the time. (Not so much of a fan when there’s a sauce or condiment on a spoon. I need to sample in context.) Last year he toasted me up a piece of “Seed Bread” he had been enjoying and it was darn skippy!
So good, I’ve been dreaming of Seed Bread ever since!
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But I’ll be honest. I’m not really the bread-buying type. In fact, if we buy bread I’m usually angry about it and stewing over my mismanagement of menu planning. (Again.) And this was swanky, expensive bread. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get my new Seed Bread fix.
My Experience
Not too long ago, I could stand it no longer. I needed Seed Bread in my life! So, I was pretty sure I could make a knock-off myself for a whole lot less.
It took some practice and quite a few failed loaves, but I’ve got something I’m really happy to add to our Family Cookbook!
I don’t think it’s a true knock-off. There were some ingredients in there I wasn’t interested in trying. Fruit juices, I think. But my loaves don’t have the store-bread flavor behind them that’s gotta come from making the loaves shelf-stable longer. It turns out, I actually like this bread better! (I think all store bread tastes moldy. Seems like I’m just a food snob?)
So you can bet the next time I visit my Dad, I’ll be taking some for him to try!
This healthy, multigrain Seed Bread is a fairly straightforward loaf of bread. I started to get all fancy pants with technique. But then I realized I would never make it if it was a pain. (Which is why the Quintessential Sourdough Loaf was such a game-changer for me.) Really, the only extra step above and beyond a regular old bread recipe is soaking the seeds and whole grains for at least an hour or more to soften them up. And roll the dough in seeds if you want them on the outside.
Ways to Make It
You can totally make this recipe by hand, in the Kitchen Aid Mixer, or in the bread machine! The dough cycle on my bread machine turned out beautifully! I even rebelled against the mid-cycle beep signaling for add-ins. Just add the seed and grain mix before the flour.
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You can skip the seedy crust if you’d like, but man, why would you? The extra step takes about 2 minutes and the toasted seeds on the outside are amazing! (Also, it’s kids’ favorite part!)
Final Thoughts
Finally, this bread makes a fantastic buttered toast! (Let’s qualify that. I need to distinguish cast-iron-skillet-bread-toasted-in-butter from counter-top-toaster-bread-slathered-in-butter-post-toasting. The two don’t compare and after that realization, I threw away my toaster.) I’ve been loving the toast with headcheese or a toasted sandwich! My little girls do complain that the crust is too hard and chewy for them to eat un-toasted. If you plan to eat it that way and don’t want the chewy crust, just skip the steaming part of the recipe.
Try baking your bread in one of these pans! I’m loving using silicone right now! 0% chance of the bread getting stuck in the pan and super easy to clean. The first middle one makes a batard and the second middle one makes a nice boule. (It’s the one used to make the round loaf in my photos in this post.) For a loaf pan, I usually stick with ceramic or stoneware but I’d love to try out the cast iron loaf pan!
Healthy Multi-Seed Bread
Healthy Multi Grain Seed Bread
Yield 2 loaves
A healthy, multigrain Seed Bread make with whole grains like wheat, rye, oats, buckwheat, and quinoa and tasty pumpkin, sunflower, flax, and sesame seeds.
Ingredients
- 3 Tablespoons pumpkin seeds
- 3 Tablespoons sunflower seeds
- 4 Tablespoons flax seeds
- 2 Tablespoons Steel Cut Oats, or Cracked Wheat
- 2 Tablespoons Buckwheat Groats
- 2 Tablespoons Quinoa
- ½ cup water
- 1 cup whole wheat flour
- 1 cup rye flour
- 4 cups all purpose flour
- 2 cups water
- 1 Tablespoon dry, active yeast
- ¼ cup honey
- 1 Tablespoon salt
- ½ cup Additional seeds for garnish, optional, not soaked
Instructions
- Combine the pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, flax seeds, steel cut oats, buckwheat groats, and quinoa in a small bowl.
- Stir in ½ cup water.
- Allow to soak for at least an hour.
- In a large mixing bowl, whisk the yeast into 2 cups of warm water.
- Add the honey, whole wheat flour, rye flour, all-purpose flour, seed mix, and salt.
- Stir together to combine and then knead the dough for about 10 minutes.
- Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set in a warm place to rise until it has doubled.
- Turn out the dough onto a floured surface.
- Divide it into 2 pieces and form the initial shape.
- Allow the dough to rest for about 10 minutes.
- Grease the pans with soft butter.
- Shape the dough once again.
- If you want a seedy crust, brush the dough with water and roll them into a mix of extra seeds spread on a plate. (About ¼ cup of mixed seeds per loaf. Feel free to add in some sesame seeds too! But I don’t recommend using the flax seeds on the crust. When toasted they taste a little fishy. Literally.)
- Place the loaves into the baking pans.
- Cover loosely with plastic wrap then allow them to rise again until doubled.
- Place an empty oven-proof dish in the bottom rack of the oven.
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- When the bread has risen, make ½”-1″ deep slashes across the top if you’d like.
- Place in the oven and close the door.
- For a chewy crust: Get about ½ cup of water and quickly pour it onto the hot, empty pan on the bottom rack of the oven to create steam. Quickly shut the oven door.
- Bake for 40 minutes or until the bread reaches an internal temperature of 200 degrees F.
- Turn out onto a wire rack to cool for as long as you can stand.
Enjoy!
Here are some other great homemade bread recipes to try!
- Restaurant Brown Bread Dinner Rolls
- Crusty Sourdough Dinner Bread
- Whole Wheat Sourdough Sandwich Bread
- No Knead Sourdough Bread
- Sourdough Kulich
- French Bread
- Carrot Cloverleaf Rolls
- Easy Sourdough Bread
- Cheddar Bacon Rolls
- No Knead Sourdough Rye Bread
I made this bread for the second time. It is
the best ever! Super delicious. My family loves it.
Yea Brenda!! So glad you guys love it- Makes me so happy!! I’m making some today as a carrier for homemade sliced ham and swiss sandwiches. I can’t wait till dinner!!
Today I made this for probably the tenth time. I rotate it with a couple other recipes I have, but my husband keeps asking for this every week. We are vegan and I will have to say it made the best vegan avocado toast I have ever had!!
My husband takes it for lunch and slathers on the almond butter.
I took my second loaf for a birthday gift for my sister in law last week. She didn’t believe I made it and she loved it
Thank you so much for the recipe.
Ah! This made me so happy Brenda! So glad you guys love it as much as I do!!
It turned out delicious! I ued a bannetone and it looked amazing!
Super, super awesome bread recipe!!! My husband’s favorite bread was a multigrain batard baked and sold by our local grocery. They stopped selling it a few months ago, and my hubby sorely missed it, so I decided to try this recipe to see if it might replace his old favorite…. not only did he like it, but he said it was MUCH better than the store-bought version!! Plus, I ended up with 66 ounces of bread, which translates into about 5.5 loaves of the store bread – at $3 per loaf, that means I turned less than $5 worth of ingredients into $16.50 worth of bread! 🙂 BTW, my hubby agrees with your children, he dislikes “chewy” crusts, so I skipped the steaming step and it turned out “perfectly,” in his opinion.:) Thank you again for helping me to make my husband’s tummy happy!
So how would you make this in a bread machine? This is my first time making bread and generally I’m a failure baker so hopefully the bread machine will do better lol