I’ve been making my Heritage Loaf free-form in a dutch oven but recently switched to a loaf pan. I like the bigger slices and the easier clean-up so I’ll be making it this way for a while. I didn’t like Heritage Loaf at first but it has grown on me. I always have some slices in the freezer now.

As you can see, very easy to remove from the pan and hardly any clean-up:

These slices toast up beautifully. A little jam or plain, it’s all good:

Here’s the recipe. It’s an old-fashioned, maslin-style crumbly loaf – a mixture of whole grain wheat and spelt flours, whole grain rye flour, and whole grain corn meal. The recipe is the same as the one I use for a free-standing loaf except there’s no preheating a dutch oven.

Ingredients:

2 cups whole wheat flour (some spelt)
1/2 cup whole rye flour
1/2 cup coarse cornmeal
1 teaspoon instant yeast
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 cups water
3 tablespoons maple syrup
1 tablespoon sourdough starter (optional)

Directions:

Combine flours, cornmeal, yeast and salt in a large bowl. Stir maple syrup and starter into water, add to flour mixture, stir until blended. Dough should be sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let rest about 4 hours at room temperature, about 70 degrees.

Nudge dough onto a lightly floured surface. With lightly floured hands and a pastry scraper, knead gently until it forms a ball. This will happen very quickly, about a minute. Form ball into a slightly oblong loaf. Lift dough with pastry scraper and place into parchment-lined loaf pan. Drape with plastic wrap, let rest about 1 hour (less on a hot day, say, over 75 degrees).

Before the hour is up, preheat oven to 360 degrees F. After the 1-hour rest, bake for 50-55 minutes or until the top begins to brown. Remove from oven and let sit in pan for 15 minutes, then remove by holding corners of parchment. Cool for several hours on a wire rack, slice and freeze.