This Italian Herb & Cheese Sourdough Bread Will Change Your Life

Italian herbs and cheese is one of my favorite sourdough inclusions to make. It's easy, it's versatile, and it is absolutely delicious. So this is the starter I was using. I wanted to show that it was slightly deflating. I started my bread a little bit later than I was anticipating, but don't let that stop you from making a loaf. It'll be just fine. I wanted to show that there was hardly any starter left in the jar, but that's still plenty to feed for next time. So I like mixing my starter, flour, and water together first and letting that rest for about an hour before coming in and adding my salt. This gives a nice jump start to the bulk fermentation, and I find that it actually speeds it up quite a bit. So if you have trouble with starting your bread too late in the day, and then you're up while you wish you were going to bed, this is a good way to speed things up. So I'm making sure I mix everything really well, wash my hands, and cover it. I like to feed my starter at this time as well, so that little bit that was left in the jar was enough to feed 50 grams flour, 50 grams water, and then this will be ready to use before bed if I want. I just use a paper towel to wipe off the stuck on starter bits so it doesn't go down the drain. So that dough rested for about an hour, and now it's time to come in and add the salt and a little bit more water. I will put all the ingredients and the timeline in the description so you can reference that for all of those details. I dimple in the salt in the water and then kind of squeeze it into the flour until it's completely absorbed. I was feeling like this dough just needed to be strengthened a bit more because it's kind of falling apart. So I like doing slap and folds. These are so fun to do and the dough transformation is amazing. It's just slow down so you can see exactly what I'm doing. And I just do this for a couple of minutes and the dough will really smooth out and the salt is completely incorporated into the dough. This dough goes back in the bowl, and I let it rest for about 30 to 45 minutes, and then I come back and I'm ready to add my inclusions. Normally, I add them during the second set of stretch and folds, but when I do that fermentalese, where the starter flour and water sit for about an hour and then move on to the dough strengthening, this kind of feels like the second set of stretch and folds, even though this is really the first time we're doing it. So I just layer those inclusions on top and then I fold them into the dough so that it's kind of evenly distributed. There are lots of ways that you can do this and I kind of switch it up each time. If you want, you can laminate the dough or spread it into a very thin wide rectangle on your countertop and sprinkle the seasonings on top and then kind of roll it up and shape it like you would like for a final shaping. That's an option or you can kind of just do what I'm doing here by kind of stretching and folding and layering it into the dough. It really doesn't matter because the more that we do stretch and folds and coil folds throughout the bulk fermentation, it'll really even out into the dough. It's just personal preference at this point. Now that the inclusions have been added to the dough, I'm going to cover this and come back in, you guessed it, 30 to 45 minutes for some stretch and folds. I like taking the temperature of the dough throughout the process just to give me some context for about how long things are going to take. The warmer your dough is, the faster the bulk fermentation will go. The cooler it is, the longer it will take. It's not an exact like watch the clock situation. It just gives you like a data point basically. I wet my hands before each round of stretch and folds just to make the dough a little bit easier to work with and less sticky. So every 30 to 45 minutes, I'm just coming back to do some stretch and folds. This really helps strengthen the dough and it also gets those inclusions nicely distributed. There's other benefits to stretch and folds too, like regulating the temperature and giving you, the baker, an opportunity to kind of check in with your dough and see how it's progressing. I usually do four to five sets of stretch and folds and or coil folds. So the further on that we get into the bulk fermentation, the more gentle I want to be with the dough so that I'm not popping all of those bubbles that are forming. So that's why at this point, I'm switching to coil folds. And again throughout the process, I'm just periodically checking in on the temperature of the dough to give me an idea if it's staying the same or if it's changing drastically. And in this case, it was staying between 70 and 72 degrees. All right. I didn't pay very close attention to the percentage rise. I'm a bad baker. Do as I say, not as I do. So I'm just going off visual. So when I touch the top of the dough, it's very smooth, slightly tacky, but not sticky. It's not sticking to my finger as I lift up. If I tug on the side of the dough, you see how it's very willing to pull away and it's not sticking? Another good sign. And then look at all these bubbles, tons of bubbles everywhere. And when I tilt the bowl, you see how it's tilting away. So these are some visual cues I use to tell when the bulk fermentation is done. Is my timing perfect on this? I honestly don't know. Again, do as I say, not as I do. But as I'm shaping it, I'll get a good feel for the dough. And if I feel like it's not quite done proofing, I'll just leave it in the banneton on the counter for a while. And if it feels nice and aerated and like it's ready to go, I'll just go and put it in the fridge. So it's kind of an on-the-fly thing that you'll get a better feel for the more that you make sourdough bread. But again, if you're brand new to sourdough and you're still figuring out bulk fermentation, definitely pay attention to the percentage rise. Oops. I just got this new bench scraper from Dexter. I'm excited to try it. It was America's Test Kitchen, their number one pick. And everything I've bought from them, that's their number one pick, has been incredible. This feels great. Holy crap, this thing is sharp. Okay, that's all I'm gonna do for the pre-shape. That's it. You see these bubbles forming? These are a great sign. When I see those bubbles popping to the surface as I create surface tension like this, that tells me that the dough is nicely aerated. And it's exactly what I want in this dough. So I'm gonna leave this for about 30 to 40 minutes uncovered and then I will come back and do the final shaping. My favorite final shaping method is the very simple caddy clasp. This is just folding the dough like a book basically and sticking it in your banneton. No fancy maneuvers, nothing you have to study. It's so simple, which is why I love it. I just pinched the seam shut and I will let this sit on the counter for like 10 to 15 minutes or so so it can relax a little and then I'll come back and kind of stitch it together. This is totally optional, but it adds just a little more surface tension. Here's a little look at our happy starter that we fed earlier on. Just wanted to show that. So, okay, here is the stitching. Very simple. You're just pulling the dough together in this way. I don't know how else to describe it. But this is adding more tension to the top of the dough, which will help us later on when we go to bake. It'll give you more oven spring. Again, this is optional. This is just kind of a little thing that a lot of us bakers like to do. It just makes us happy. It's like tucking the dough in for bed at night. I know it sounds silly. We're weirdos. That's fine. Okay, so this gets covered up and it goes in the fridge overnight. The next morning I wake up, pull it out of the fridge. My oven is preheated to 450 degrees Fahrenheit with a Dutch oven inside. And about 10 minutes after my oven says it's done is when I will start scoring my dough and putting it in just to make sure that the Dutch oven is nice and hot. I'm trying out this new bread loam. I really enjoyed it. I'm just doing a very simple side score and a little wheat stalk pattern on the left. Very standard. And then this extra little score going under the top just helps provide a little bit of an ear if you want. I don't actually like an ear, but sometimes it's fun to do because it looks really pretty in pictures. So this goes in the oven covered for 30 minutes. Let me take the lid off and I decided to lower the oven temperature because the loaf was looking pretty brown. So I lowered it to 325 and baked it at that temperature for about 25 more minutes. Here's what we're left with. I thought the loaf looked beautiful. I wasn't so sure about the bulk fermentation because I was kind of lazy with it, but this turned out actually perfect. So it's just good feeling to me that the more that you practice with sourdough, the better you get a feel for those visual cues. You can kind of rely on your intuition the more that you do it. So here is the crumb. Really beautiful bread and it was delicious. My husband and his friends could not stop eating it and my husband actually said this, he thinks it's the best loaf I've ever made. So definitely check out the description for the recipe and let me know in the comments if you try it out.