Yesterday I made three breads: one, the Saffron Yeast Cake, two, a sourdough onion loaf, and three…you’ll see tomorrow. Let me show you the sourdough onion bread.
Sourdough Onion Bread
Refresh the starter:
170 grams sourdough starter
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup flour
Mix the above three ingredients together, cover, and allow to develop for 1 hour.
Meantime:
Chop 1 large onion and saute it in 2 Tblsp. olive oil. Let it only start to turn golden.
Then add 1/2 tsp. black pepper or grind several turns of the pepper mill over it.
Add 1 Tblsp. kosher salt. Stir well, and turn the flame off.
To the refreshed starter, add
1/2 cup water and
the sauteed, seasoned onions, with all the oil
Now you need 3 1/2 cups bread flour, and up to 1/2 cup more if necessary.
Start working the flour in, 1 cup at a time. Add the extra 1/2 cup a tablespoon at a time, only till you have a firm, flexible ball of dough that’s only a little sticky. Fold and stretch as soon as the dough has become cohesive.
You’ll see that when you stretch the dough out, the flour is absorbed much more quickly than with traditional kneading. Just pull the dough apart with your two hands, making a rectangle, then fold the sides under to make a ball, then stretch the dough again to shape a new rectangle. Do this 4 or 5 times, and stop with a ball in your hands. Now, if this seems strange or confusing, just knead the dough as usual. Stretch and fold gives the bread a rustic texture with a hole-y crumb, but it’s not crucial.
Cover your ball of dough. Plastic wrap is best; the dough rises to a greater lightness with it. Don’t know why, but so it is. Leave the dough alone for 8 hours. If your kitchen is cold, just leave it out.
Gently deflate the dough. Add flour by tablespoons, kneading or stretching & folding as you go, to get a firm ball of dough. Dribble some olive oil into the mixing bowl. Put the ball of dough in and turn it around a few times so the oil covers its surface. Cover again, and leave to rise another 8 hours, till doubled.
Break the dough down again gently. It should be quite light. Either cut it in half for 2 medium loaves, or keep it whole for one large loaf. Sprinkle flour as needed to maintain shape. Allow it to rise once more on a sheet of baking paper or on the baking tray which has been well sprinkled with corn flour. Let it rise about 1 hour longer, this time in a warm place. It should have not quite doubled, and show bubbles under the surface. The timing isn’t exact because the temperature in your kitchen will determine how long it takes. Be prepared to allow this last rise 2 hours.
Preheat the oven to 350 F, 180 C.
Paint the dough with a beaten egg. Decorate it with poppy seeds.
Bake for 40 minutes. Check to see if it’s done; if it seems underdone (toothpick test again), set your timer for another 10 minutes and let it bake.
This is a dense, chewy bread with lots of onion flavor. Very good indeed.
That bread looks delicious!
Is plastic wrap good for letting challah rise as well? I usually just cover my challah dough with a towel.
Marcy Goldman recommends wrapping the entire bowl in a clean garbage bag.
Mimi, I left it out all night but it didn’t seem to rise very much. What should I do?
Mrs. S.,
I’ve been thinking about plastic wrap. I think that although porous, it keeps much of the moisture and heat from fermentation in the bowl, which helps the dough to rise till light.
I cover all my doughs with plastic wrap, or as recommended above, put the whole thing in a clean garbage bag. Of course, once you’ve shaped your loaves and put them to rise the last time, you don’t want plastic clinging to them and tearing the dough when you remove it. I also cover with just a clean towel at that stage. If it’s a particularly sticky dough, I’ll flour the towel, too.
mominsrael,
It sounds like your starter was sleepy. Had it been in the fridge for a long while without being refreshed?
Yes, miss bread detective. I let it go for a few more hours. It’s on the second rise now, waiting for the challah to come out of the over.
Thanks for the information. I’ll have to try it next time I make challah. (It doesn’t look like I’m going to be getting to challah this week…)
Shabbat Shalom.
[...] Onion Sourdough Bread [...]
That sounds, and looks delicious, I’ll be bookmarking it for later!
Sarah,
Yes, I’ll be following your sourdough project on your blog. Stunning photography there.
Mimi
I’ve started making the bread. Because of my work hours, this looks like it will take me about 2 1/2 days….
I got the starter going at around 2PM, finally was able to mix up the onions at 9:30. Tried to wait patiently for the onions to cool down…mixed up the dough and stuck it in the fridge. This morning it had only risen a little bit…left it out for 1 hour, put it back in the fridge, and hopefully I’ll be able to punch it down at 4PM (if not, I’ll take it out to rise more until 7)
It definitely won’t be baked before tomorrow evening…
Did I mention this is my first bread baking experiment in almost 10 years…and the first with sourdough!
Hey, Robin, really good spirit to tackle a long project like that! Sourdough can be daunting when you’re not used to the long fermentation period: just let it rise. Even in the fridge, it’ll rise eventually. But to hustle it along, put the bowl in a warm place when you return home.
Let us know how it turns out!
Mimi,
Baked it this morning…took from Tuesday to Friday, but as long as bread has patience, I do
It didn’t rise as much as your pictures (not as airy), but very yummy. More sour than I expected, but I don’t have much experience with sourdough (eating or making). I think I need to make a schedule out for working folks trying to make bread…
I’ll probably be blogging this bread, so I’ll let you know!
(I’m curious if my kids will like it..)
I think, Safranit, that the bread was too long in the making. It sounds like a lot of the active yeast cells died, so the loaf was too sour and heavy. A good sourdough loaf needs to start with a refreshed, active starter and shouldn’t need to rise more than 8 hours initially.
I suggest that next time, you start your sponge overnight with about 3/4 of the flour, and give 10 minutes of time before work to break it down, kneading the rest of the flour in to get the consistency you want and shaping the loaf. Then put it in the fridge till you get home. Once home, take it out and leave it at room temp till it’s light, with visible blisters just under the surface skin. Then it’ll be ready to bake. This might take another couple of hours, till the dough warms up and fermentation takes off again. So you’d be baking at night. Cover the hot loaf with a towel and leave it till next morning – you can take it to work!
On the 170 grams of starter, about what would that equate to in cups? Do you know of good site that has conversion tables to change weight to volume for cooking?
Thanks ~ Gally
Hi, Gally,
170 grams = 6 ounces, or
12 Tablespoons, or
something between 3/4 of a cup and 1 cup. Just a little over 3/4 cup.
For a very good site that converts all kinds of measurements, look at the “Food Sites and Forums” blogroll here on the right, and go to “Online Conversion.”