Bacon Jalapeno Cheese Sourdough Recipe

[HawkerXP]

Looks great!

[RonB]

Very tasty lookin'.

[58limited]

I've been making my own natural leaven sourdough for about 5-6 years now. Aside from the standard artisan loaf, two of my favorites are bacon jalapeno cheddar and garlic Parmesan rosemary. Well, today I combined both recipes plus some onion and - OMG - it is great! I am out of cheddar so I used Colby Jack blend and then decided "what the hell" and added Parmesan, garlic , a white onion, and rosemary too.

I use Chad Robertson's method as explained in his book Tartine Bread. I'm not going to go into too much detail on the methodology below but you can review his method on youtube or here:https://www.karenskitchenstories.com...try-bread.html

I'm calling this my "Everything" loaf

Leaven - night before:

100 grams all purpose flour
100 grams whole wheat flour
200 grams water
1 Tbsp active sourdough starter.

Bread:

900 grams bread flour
100 grams whole wheat flour
650 grams water + 50 grams extra
200 grams leaven
20 grams salt.


Mix all but the salt and 50 g water. Let set for 30-60 minutes, then add salt and the 50 grams water. Turn the dough every 30 minutes. I usually add the bacon cheddar jalapeno mixture when the salt is added or with the first turn but today I added it at the two hour mark. I adlibbed most of this today, here is what I added:

12 oz jalapeno bacon, 3/4 cooked (it will finish cooking in the bread). I added 1 diced white onion to the bacon while it cooked. Then I added 1 can Hatch sliced jalapenos (drained and diced - I usually use three fresh jalapenos but I am out), 1 Tbsp fresh rosemary (fine chopped) and 2 cloves minced garlic and cooked until aromatic, then removed from heat to cool (keep the bacon grease in the mixture - there is not much and the sourdough culture seems to like it). Added 1 cup colby jack cheese and 1/3 cup parmesan cheese. I turned this into the dough for the last two hours of the initial rise and continued to turn every 30 minutes.

Divided dough into two loaves and put in baskets to rise. Preheated oven to 500* and put a cast iron Dutch oven in to preheat. Once heated, I put the loaf into the Dutch oven, cut the top, and spritzed with water. Reduced oven to 450* and cooked with the lid on for 20 minutes, then lid off for 20-25 minutes until dark brown. The bread tastes amazing but I will add more cheese next time. I usually use two cups cheddar but I was running low on cheese in general today and was too lazy to go to the store.

This is one of the biggest oven rises I've gotten out of an artisan loaf:



While writing this I kept going back to the kitchen to get another slice of this wonderful bread - still warm and with some butter.

So, here are individual recipes:

Bacon Jalapeno Cheddar

1 lb bacon, diced and cooked about 3/4 done
3 jalapenos, seeded and diced
2 cups shredded sharp cheddar
2 T bacon grease.

Add to dough when salt is added.

Garlic Parmesan Rosemary

1T fresh rosemary, chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
2T olive oil

Add to dough when salt is added