Sunflower and Flax Seeds Whole Wheat Cast Iron Bread – no kneading required and only a few ingredients turn into a super crusty delicious bread.
Ever since I’ve started making this easy no knead bread, I’ve never looked back and this is pretty much the only bread I ever make. It couldn’t get any easier. This is the 3rd variation I try, I’ve made one with only white flour, one with whole wheat flour and now I’m trying one with half white half whole wheat and I threw in some sunflower seeds and flax seeds. I have to say this is my favorite, simply because of the sunflower and flax seeds. I cannot tell you enough how easy this bread is.
We love this bread, whenever we want fresh bread, this is the bread we go to. I love the crust and it never fails to amaze me how great the crust is on this bread, it’s like a miracle, like magic. Nothing tastes and smells better, at least to me, than homemade fresh bread, straight out of the oven. If you’re patient enough you can wait until it’s cool to cut into it, or if you’re more the impatient kind like my husband, then you probably will just break into it and have at it.
So when I said this bread is easy to make I didn’t lie. The day before you want to eat the bread, all you need to do is mix all the ingredients in a big bowl, and by mixing I mean to roughly just mix them with a wooden spoon until somewhat incorporated. That’s it, you just cover the bowl and leave it until the next day, you need to let it sit for about 12 to 18 hours. Usually I’ll do mine the night before, takes no more than a couple minutes. This is when you also throw in the seeds or whatever else you want to add to the bread, like herbs, cheeses, or dried fruits like cranberries.
The next day all you need to do is shape the dough into a ball, but make sure you flour your hands really well. It doesn’t have to be perfect.
Before you place it in your dutch oven, you need to heat your dutch oven as you’re warming up your oven, this will prevent your bread from sticking to the bottom. Trust me I know, I forgot once to heat up the dutch oven and I had a hard time taking the bread out.
Cover it up with the lid and bake it for 30 minutes, remove the lid and bake for another 15 minutes and you end up with the most gorgeous little bread you’ve ever seen. Even if you’ve never made bread before this is a no fail recipe. Trust me.
Watch the video for the original No Knead Crusty bread:
If you guys love this recipe, and most importantly make it yourselves, please let us know. Take a picture and tag it #jocooks on Instagram so we can see it. I always love to see what you guys come up with!
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Sunflower and Flax Seeds Whole Wheat Cast Iron Bread
Ingredients
- 2 cups whole wheat flour
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp active dry yeast
- 2 1/4 cup water
- 1/3 cup sunflower seeds
- 1/3 cup flax seeds
Instructions
- In a big bowl mix flour, salt and yeast together. At this time you can add the sunflower and flax seeds and stir them around a bit. Pour water into the bowl and using a spatula mix it until it's all incorporated. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it sit on your counter for 12 to 18 hours.
- Preheat oven to 450 F degrees. Add your ]cast iron pot to the oven and heat it as well until it's at 450 F degrees.
- Remove pot from oven and remove the lid from it.
- Flour your work surface really well and make sure you flour your hands really well. With your floured hands gently remove the dough from the bowl and roughly shape it into a ball. Take the ball of dough and drop it into the pot. Cover the pot with the lid and place it back in the oven.
- Bake for 30 minutes with the lid on, after which remove the lid and bake for another 15 to 20 minutes until golden brown.
- Remove from the oven and let cool.
Recipe Notes
Nutrition Information:
What you’ll need:
If you love this bread, try these other no knead cast iron breads:
Just pulled it out of oven. It looks perfect. Cannot wait to try it. Was super easy to put together. I didn’t have a Dutch oven so used a casserole dish with lid. Also no flax seeds so used a about a tablespoon of poppy seeds instead. Let it rise about 18 hours, it was a bit flat when I placed it in the hot pot but it baked up nicely with a nice hard crust. Wish I could include a photo because it looks like a professional bread. Thanks Joanna for this recipe will try experimenting with adding other nuts and seeds possibly cranberries as well.
Awesome!! So glad you liked it 🙂
Hi Joanna — thanks so much for this recipe. My family has been turning out (white flour) sourdough loaves which are wonderful but I crave whole grains. I made this for the first time and like the nutty flavor a lot but my loaf came out fairly flat and dense. I used a mix of white (1 cup) and whole grain (2 1/2 cups whole wheat and 1/2 cup mixed grain flour) and let it rise for the full 18 hours, which I think was too long. I think maybe it overproved and then collapsed on itself when I formed it into a ball for baking, and the exhausted yeasties had no more power. How do you determine how much proving is the right amount? Any other suggestions to get a better rise and texture? Thanks!
Hi Renee,
Here’s my recipe for the basic whole wheat no knead bread, and it has a video and lots more questions answered in the post, it might help you a bit more. https://www.jocooks.com/recipes/no-knead-cast-iron-whole-wheat-bread/
I enjoyed making this recipe. I did tweak it a bit. I used 1 1/2C almond flour 1 1/2C brown rice flour, 1/4C flax meal flour, 1 TSP baking powder
2 TBSP psyllium husk powder, 2 TBSP Nutritional yeast, 2TBSP milk pwd,
Sunflower and pumpkin seeds. 18 hrs proof. I turned it upside down after removing from oven and COOL completely before slicing, crusty, seeds evenly distributed, nice dept, and height,cooked in a stainless steel pot. Thanks, will make again.
After my dough rose all night, beautifully, I could not shape it into a ball. It kept spreading. Too wet maybe?
I plopped it into the pot anyway and am baking it as I type this. How could I rectify it at that point? Or just less water next time.
Also, is a second rise not required?
Probably a bit less water, you might be in a very humid environment. A second rise is not required.
This is so easy and so delicious.
For the rising, does the bowl have to be covered with plastic wrap, or can I use a dishtowel? I don’t like to use plastic if I can avoid it.
Just a dishtowel is fine.
Is this whole flax seed or flax meal?
Flax seed. 🙂
I added fresh rosemary to mine. We all enjoyed a thick slice today! I will check out your other recipes 😁
This is my third time baking this recipe, I love it! I’m a beginner though so I have a couple questions:
1. My loaf seems a little flat, very tough on the bottom, should it be lighter and fluffier? How do I achieve that?
2: should I double the recipe for a 6qt such oven?
I love adding extra seeds and grains, delicious!! ❤️
1. You could let it rise a second time, after you shape into a loaf let it rise for another 30 min to 1 hour.
2. Yes, for an example check out this recipe: https://www.jocooks.com/recipes/fast-and-easy-no-knead-bread/
Thank you!
Question – if I increase to 3 cups of all purpose flour and 3 cups of whole wheat flour, how much active dry yeast should I use?
1.5 tsp. In the recipe card where the number of servings are, if you hover over it and tap it you’ll see a slider, and you can move that slider to the right until the flour amount changes to 3 cups and then the other ingredient amounts will automatically update as well.
I love the bread! The crust on mine is very difficult to cut. I have tried several knives.
Help?
Two things come to mind, not enough gluten development and too much moisture in the dough.
After setting this out to rise last night, I am baking this bread now, I added a bunch of dry Italian seasoning for extra flavor, from your comments I saw that since i live in Florida with very high humidity, i added more flower this morning so it would set up a bit more, probably not enough we will see. I can’t wait for it to come out of the oven!
My bread dough was just way too sticky !! I could hardly get it out of the bowl and it stuck to my fingers. No way could I get lit to shape into a ball. I do live in a high humidity area. And because of the wetness it stuck to the bottom of the pot and I couldn’t get the whole loaf to fall out of the pan. Taste was delicious though.
So humidity plays a big role here, when in a humid environment, I recommend adding a bit more flour than asked for in a recipe.
Add more flour at the very beginning before it rises overnight ?
Yes.
I made it just as written and it is so good I also appreciated the video – it was short and well edited. The steps were easy to follow and the clean up was quick! Would highly recommend.
Next time I want to experiment with herbs. Which ones would you recommend?
Thanks Jo!
Rosemary or thyme would be delicious!
Words cannot describe how grateful I am for this recipe. It may be one of the single things that gave me hope during stay at home orders. Once they were available, I tried other fancy seed blends but the bread was not nearly as delicious as this loaf! Thank you for sharing your recipe!
This is so nice, thank you so much!!
I am so glad you like the recipe, Cintra 🙂
Hi! I was wondering if I could add in some maple syrup and oats?
You probably could just make sure however much maple syrup you’re adding to subtract that amount from the water, either that or add a bit more flour.