Bread Archives - Urban Homesteading

Category: Bread

How to Make Sourdough English Muffins

Posted on April 17, 2025April 17, 2025 by craig

Continuing with my seasonal shift in homesteading—winter and early spring being prime time for sourdough and other baking projects—this past week I hopped on Zoom with my bestie and we taught ourselves how to make sourdough English muffins. This is quite an easy recipe with very delicious results. While our sourdough English muffins didn’t turn out quite as airy and fluffy as traditional English muffins, the end result was pretty bang-on perfect.

After we let our English muffins cool for a bit, we proceeded to make Eggs Benedict for brunch—a toasted English muffin, topped with ham or bacon, topped with a poached egg, and smothered in hollandaise sauce. It was—chef’s kiss—perfect!

Eggs Benedict made with homemade sourdough English muffins

To tackle this recipe, you will need an active sourdough starter. If you’re new to the world of sourdough, you can find my guide to creating your starter here.

While English muffins do have some milk in them, you can make them dairy-free / vegan by swapping out the milk with a milk alternative. I didn’t have milk on hand so I used unsweetened almond milk and got great results.

How to make sourdough English muffins

As mentioned above, you will need an active and bubble sourdough starter. If you’re new to sourdough or haven’t made a starter in a while, you’ll want to create one first using the instructions on this page. It takes about a week for a sourdough starter to really thrive and be useful. If you’re in a colder/drier climate like me, it can take a couple weeks and then it might not get really strong for quite some time. However, my bestie is in a warmer/humid climate and her starter was very active and bubbly within a couple days and could be used almost immediately.

Now, let’s learn how to make sourdough English muffins!

Step one: The night before, getting it started

Like most sourdough recipes, this is intended to be a two day project, starting the night before. In a large bowl, combine 1/2 cup of active, bubbly starter, 240 grams of flour, and 1 cup of milk (or a plant milk if preferred; I found almond milk worked fine). The recipe I was working from called for 2 cups of flour here, but I’ve found I get better results for bread if I weigh the flour. Sometimes it comes out a little too wet and I have to add flour, but it beats having a too-dry dough from too much flour when I measure by cups.

Give it all a good stir until fully combined, then cover with plastic wrap and let it sit at room temperature overnight. You could leave it longer if you want — a pastry chef once told me that the secret to a good sourdough project is a long, slow rise, so you could go 18 or even 24 hours if you want.

The dough for English muffins, mixed and ready to rest overnight

Step two: The next morning, adding ingredients

Add 80 grams of flour (or 3/4 cups if you’re going by volume), 1 Tbsp sugar, 3/4 tsp salt, and 1 tsp baking soda. Mix this all with a spoon or spatula. I found this came together really easily, but if your dough is a bit dry, you may need to dive in with your hands.

The rest of the ingredients mixed into the English muffin dough

Step three: Knead the dough

Flour a countertop or table and roll the dough out of the bowl and onto the floured surface. Knead the dough for 4 to 5 minutes. If your dough is wet and sticky — and if you measure flour by weight like I do, there’s a good chance your dough is too wet — gradually add flour in small amounts until the dough is tacky but not sticky. It should feel like it’s sticking to your fingers when you remove your hand, but your hand comes away clean. If dough is sticking to your hand, it’s too wet.

Step four: Roll out the dough and cut it

When your dough is fully kneaded and not too sticky, use a floured rolling pin to roll it out to 3/4 inch thickness. Using a drinking glass or a round cookie or pastry cutter, cut out your English muffins and place them on parchment paper. If you have cornmeal (I didn’t), you can dust each side with a bit of cornmeal.

If, like me, you’re horrible at judging size and you end up rolling them far too thin, you can stack them together (before dusting with cornmeal). You should end up with 6-8, whereas I got 16, which told me I had made them way too thin. If you stack them, you don’t need to press them together; they will stick together when you cook them.

Let them rest for 45 minutes.

Uncooked sourdough English muffins, resting before cooking

Step five: Cook the English muffins

Put a large pan on the stove and set the stove to medium heat. Let it prewarm a bit. Since I didn’t have cornmeal to dust the English muffins, I gave the pan a quick spritz of cooking spray.

Once the pan is nice and warm, cook the English muffins for 6-8 minutes per side. Keep an eye on them because if your stove runs a little hotter, you may need a shorter cooking time. My first batch took 6 minutes per side and the second took about 5 per side. They can burn a bit, so keep an eye out for that too.

Sourdough English muffins cooking in a pan on the stove

Step six: Let cool and enjoy!

For best results, let the English muffins cool before cutting into them. Breads can sometimes still cook a bit with the heat retained inside and cutting them open can cause that heat to dissipate. Opening them before cooling can also allow steam to escape and make the bread a little drier.

Homemade sourdough English muffins, cooling before eating

English muffins are an integral part of Eggs Benedict, which is what we proceeded to make with these. We used my husband’s recipe for hollandaise sauce, but if you’re looking for a recipe, this one looks pretty good.

Sourdough English Muffins

These sourdough English muffins are easy to make and a delicious part of breakfast!

5 from 1 vote

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 12

Cook Time 16

Course Bread, Breakfast

Ingredients

½ cup Active, Bubbly Sourdough Starter
330 g Flour (or 2 ¾ cup)
1 cup Milk (can be plant milk)
1 Tbsp Sugar
¾ tsp Salt
1 tsp Baking Soda
Cornmeal, for dusting

Instructions

The night before
In a large bowl, add sourdough starter, 240 g / 2 cups flour, and milk. Stir with a spoon until combined. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit overnight, or longer, at room temperature.
The next day
Add 90 g / ¾ cup flour, sugar, salt, and baking soda. Stir to combine.
Roll out dough onto floured surface and knead for 4-5 minutes. If your dough is wet and sticky, slowly incorporate additional flour until it's tacky but no longer sticky.
With a floured rolling pin, roll dough to ¾ inch thickness. With a drinking glass or round pastry / cookie cutter, cut out muffins. You should end up with about 6-8 English muffins.
Dust each side with cornmeal and let them rest on parchment paper for 45 minutes.
Preheat a large pan on the stove to medium heat. Cook English muffins for about 6-8 minutes per side, careful not to burn them, until they are ready. Allow English muffins to cool before slicing and using.

Keyword English Muffins, Sourdough, Sourdough English Muffins

How to Make Irish Soda Bread

Posted on April 4, 2025April 4, 2025 by craig

Every year for St. Patrick’s Day, we invite a friend over and put on an Irish dinner, which usually consists of an Irish stew, Irish soda bread, and either some whisky or a Guinness. I’ve made this dinner a few times now, and sometimes play around with the menu, such as adding Guinness and Cheddar Dip, Irish Potato Bread, or an Irish Drop Shot for a drink. But I’ve never really gotten the handle on the Irish soda bread—it always comes out way too dense and tough. This year I was determined to do it right, so I pulled up a few recipes online and compared them and taught myself how to make Irish soda bread. I’ve since made this recipe a couple more times and it’s turned out perfect every time, so I think I’ve finally hacked it!

What I was doing wrong before was measuring the flour by volume, when really flour should be measured by weight. The amount of flour in a cup can really vary from measurement to measurement—similar to brown sugar, it can be lightly packed or tightly packed, and that can make a big difference on your end result.

While the recipes I looked at called for flour measured by volume, I switched to a weight measurement and instantly all of my Irish soda bread is light and fluffy and soft and delicious!

How to Make Irish Soda Bread

Step one: Setting up

Preheat your oven to 425 F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Step two: Mix dry ingredients

Add flour, baking soda, and salt to a bowl and whisk to combine.

Step three: Add buttermilk

Create a well in the centre of your dry ingredients and add your buttermilk.

If you don’t have buttermilk on hand, you can make it with 1 3/4 cups milk and 1 3/4 tablespoons lemon juice. If you’d like to make it vegan (or, like me, forget to buy milk but have vegan milk on hand), you can make buttermilk using the same ratios with soy milk, almond milk, or other vegan milk. For these photos, I forgot to buy milk, so this is made with almond milk.

Mix until combined.

Mix ingredients - this dough is still a little too wet

My dough was a little too wet so I added a bit of flour and mixed some more.

Step three: Knead the dough

Transfer the dough to a floured counter or table and lightly knead the dough. If it’s too wet and sticky, add flour in small amounts until dough is still tacky but holds together and doesn’t stick to your hands. I usually have to add some flour for this reason.

Step four: Prep the loaf for the oven

Roll the dough into a round loaf and place on the parchment paper lined baking sheet. With a sharp knife, score the top with an X.

Place on a baking sheet and score the top with an X

Step five: Bake the bread

Place the baking sheet in the oven for 30 minutes or until loaf is golden brown. It should sound hollow when tapped.

Freshly baked Irish soda bread, golden brown in colour

Let the loaf cool for at least half an hour before slicing. Cutting into it while still hot can lead to moisture evaporation, which can make the bread drier and tougher.

Step six: Enjoy!

Irish soda bread lasts for several days in an airtight container at room temperature. It may last longer, but we always eat it by the third day because it’s just so darn delicious!

I have a carb-loving cat who will steal bread, pasta, cereal, and more any chance he gets. I happened to turn my back for about 30 seconds after slicing some bread, and…

Irish Soda Bread

Light, fluffy, delicious, and easy to make, this Irish soda bread is a sure winner at the dinner table!

5 from 2 votes

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Prep Time 10

Cook Time 5

Course Bread

Cuisine bread, Irish

Ingredients

480 grams All-Purpose Flour
1 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Salt
1¾ cup Buttermilk

Instructions

Preheat oven to 425℉ and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
In a large bowl, whisk flour, baking soda, and salt.
Create a well in the centre and add buttermilk. Stir until combined.
Transfer dough to a floured counter or table and lightly knead to form a round loaf. Add more flour in small amounts if dough is too wet and sticky.
Place the round loaf on the parchment paper lined baking sheet. With a sharp knife, score an X on the top of the loaf.
Bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown. Bread should sound hollow if tapped.
Let cool at least 30 minutes before slicing. If sliced while still too warm, moisture may evaporate and bread may become tough.

Notes

The flour is about four cups, but you’ll get better results by weighing it rather than using a measuring cup.

If you don’t have buttermilk on hand, you can mix 1 3/4 cup milk with 1 1/2 Tbsp lemon juice.

If you’d like to make this vegan, buttermilk can be made from almond milk or soy milk, to varying degrees of success. The photographed bread in this post was made with buttermilk made from almond milk.

Keyword Homemade bread, Irish soda bread, soda bread

How to Make Sourdough Chocolate Chip Cookies

Posted on March 27, 2025 by craig

I’ve got an active sourdough starter that’s been around for about two years now, and who has recently been named Louie. (Naming your starter is a tradition, and one I’ve held off on until recently.) Louie spends most of the summer in the fridge, getting fed every couple weeks, because garden season is just a little too overwhelming to be thinking about making bread. But once the snow falls and the garden is done, I inevitably bring the starter out of the fridge, feed it a bit more regularly, and start getting the itch to bake—as evidenced by the recent posts on making sourdough bread and making sourdough focaccia.

Maintaining a sourdough starter means discarding a lot of the starter every time you feed it, which can feel wasteful. Thankfully, there are hundreds of recipes that use up this starter, making good stuff out of the waste. For this post, we’re going to learn how to make sourdough chocolate chip cookies.

What makes these sourdough chocolate chip cookies good?

I love cookies. Like, all kinds. There isn’t such a thing as a bad cookie.

Continue reading →

Sourdough focaccia bread topped with rosemary, roasted garlic, and cherry tomatoes

How to Make Sourdough Focaccia Bread

Posted on March 10, 2025March 10, 2025 by craig

My family is pretty big into movies. My husband and I watch movies at home every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and then every Tuesday (which is “cheap Tuesday” at the theatres here) we check out a new release with my mom. While we sometimes skip a day here and there, it works out to about 200 movies a year.

So when the Oscars comes around, it’s a big event for us. We all invite ourselves over to my sister’s place (because she’s the only one with cable to watch the telecast), and my husband makes a big dinner for Caesar salad, fettuccini Alfredo, and apple crumble, all made from scratch (even the Alfredo sauce and Caesar dressing).

Normally we buy a loaf of garlic bread from the grocery store to go with it—but I’ve been in a real baking mood lately and offered to make sourdough focaccia bread.

Sourdough focaccia bread is easy to make if you have a healthy sourdough starter bubbling away, and the toppings are completely optional and customizable to your tastes and what you have on hand.

I ended up topping mine with herb salt (also known as butcher salt), roasted garlic, dehydrated rosemary, and (dehydrated and then rehydrated) cherry tomatoes.

It was soft and airy like you expect of focaccia, with the chewiness and tang of sourdough, and immensely tasty with the toppings I added. It immediately became a crowd pleaser.

How to make sourdough focaccia bread

The first thing you’ll need before even starting this recipe is a healthy, active sourdough starter.

If you’re brand new to sourdough and don’t have a starter, I have a post here to help guide you through the steps of creating one. It takes about a week to get one going and your success will vary based on local climate conditions and a number of other factors. Your sourdough starter will likely get stronger as time goes on, provided you take good care of it, so your results with this recipe may be partly influenced by how old your starter is.

Step one: Make the dough

Start by adding 50-100 grams of sourdough starter to a bowl. I went with the full 100 grams because my starter can be a little slow to rise sometimes, especially in the winter (and I was making this in early March), so I figured extra starter would be better.

To the starter, add 10 grams of salt and 440 grams of water.

Stir to combine as best you can. A spatula will work well, but I sometimes opt for a fork.

Water, salt, and sourdough starter mixed together

Then add 512 grams of flour. As I outline in my post about sourdough starters, I’ve started doing a mix of whole wheat flour and white flour, as it works better in my local climate, so feel free to experiment with flour if you’re curious. If you’re not in Canada, you’ll likely want to use bread flour as it will likely give you better results. All-purpose flour in Canada is similar to bread flour, so I just use the standard all-purpose.

Mix in the flour with your spatula or fork until you get a rough and wet dough ball.

Step 2: Rest and fold (and rest again)

Cover with plastic wrap or a damp towel and let the dough ball rest for about a half hour.

Then do a “pinch and fold”. Grab a pinch of dough from the edge of the ball, pull it upward and toward the centre of the ball, folding it over. Go around the dough ball, doing this about 8-10 times. Try not to tear the dough as that’s not the goal.

Gently rub a splash of olive oil over the top of the dough. I have to confess that I used canola oil because it’s what I had on hand (and olive oil has become very expensive lately).

Cover again with plastic wrap or a damp towel and let rest for 4 to 18 hours. Since it’s winter here, things are cool and dry, I went with the full 18 hours. What you’re ultimately looking for is for the dough to have doubled in size, so how long this takes will vary based on where you are and where you leave the dough. it might be tempting to put the dough in a warmer place like in an oven with the oven light on, but this might become too warm. Your best strategy is to do this at room temperature and just let it take how long it’s going to take. As a chef once told me, the key to making anything with sourdough really good is a “long, slow rise”.

Step three: Transfer dough to baking dish

Drizzle a few tablespoons of olive oil in a 9×13 baking dish. To make sure nothing would stick, I also gave the sides of the dish a spritz with some cooking spray.

Gently scoop the dough out of the bowl and into the dish. It will likely form an oval shape. Gently grab each side and fold toward the centre so you roughly have a rectangle. Flip the dough over to the seam side is down.

Sourdough focaccia dough resting in a baking dish

Rub the top of the dough with more oil, then cover again and let it rest for 4-6 hours.

Step four (optional): Prepare toppings

Focaccia can be made with just a generous sprinkle of salt over the top, but I wanted to make mine a little extra special, so I roasted a head of garlic in the air fryer until the cloves were soft and cooked, and I threw some dehydrated cherry tomatoes into water to plump them up a little bit.

Step five: Bake the sourdough focaccia bread

Heat oven to 425 F.

Rub some oil onto your hands and then press down on the dough to create dimples. Do this across the whole surface.

Sourdough focaccia with dimples pressed into it

Add toppings of your choice. At a minimum, you should add a generous sprinkle of sea salt / chunky / flaky salt. I used:

The garlic I roasted in the air fryer
Drained rehydrated cherry tomatoes
Dried rosemary
Butcher’s salt (a flaky/chunky salt with dried herbs mixed in)

Sourdough focaccia ready for the oven, with roasted garlic, cherry tomatoes, rosemary, and salt on top

Bake for 25 minutes until golden brown.

When ready, remove dish from oven and let cool for at least 20 minutes before slicing. If you cut into it while it’s hot, moisture could evaporate, so it’s best to let it cool even longer.

You should have an absolutely delicious sourdough focaccia bread that will impress anyone.

Sourdough Focaccia Bread

Light and fluffy focaccia with the tang of sourdough, this easy to make recipe is a crowd-pleaser.

5 from 2 votes

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 20

Cook Time 25

Resting Time 1

Course Appetizer

Cuisine bread, Italian

Ingredients

50-100 g Bubbly and Active Sourdough Starter
10 g Salt
440 g Water
512 g Flour (see note)
3 Tbsp Olive Oil
Flaky salt and/or other toppings of your choice (cherry tomatoes, roasted garlic, rosemary, etc.)

Instructions

Add sourdough starter, water, and salt to a bowl. Mix with a spatula or fork until well blended.
Add flour and mix until a dough forms.
Cover with plastic wrap or a damp towel and let rest 30 minutes.
Do a "pinch and fold"—pinch the outer edge of the dough ball and fold it to the centre. Do this 8-10 times around the dough ball.
Gently rub the top of the dough ball with a splash of oil.
Cover and let rest 4-18 hours, until doubled in size.
Once doubled in size, drizzle about 2 Tbsp oil into a 9×13 baking dish. Optionally, you can spray or grease the sides of the dish to help prevent sticking.
Scoop dough into baking dish. It should form an oval. Fold the dough so it roughly looks like a rectangle and flip the dough so the seam side is down.
Cover and let rest 4-6 hours. During this time you could prep any optional toppings that need prepping, such as roasting garlic.
Heat oven to 425℉.
Rub oil on your hands and press down on the dough, creating dimples across the top. Sprinkle with flaky salt and add any toppings you wish.
Bake for 25 minutes until golden brown.
Let rest at least 20 minutes before slicing. If it's hot while slicing, moisture may evaporate, leaving a dryer, denser bread.

Notes

Note on flour:

If you’re in Canada, all-purpose flour should be fine. I opt to use a blend of about 20% whole wheat flour and 80% all-purpose flour.

If you’re outside of Canada, you will have better results using bread flour.

(Canada’s all-purpose flour is similar to bread flour in the rest of the world.)

Keyword focaccia bread, sourdough focaccia

How to Bake Sourdough Bread from Scratch

Posted on March 3, 2025March 3, 2025 by craig

It seems like it was the “millennial thing” to learn how to bake sourdough bread from scratch during the pandemic lockdowns in 2020 and 2021. While I never really got into it, I did at that time pull out my husband’s uncle’s bread machine and finally teach myself how to make bread (albeit machine-assisted).

It was surprisingly easy, but it left me unsatisfied. I wanted more control. I wanted the artistic flair that you see on social media posts (which I’m still working on), and more importantly… I wanted sourdough.

There’s a local chain of cafes here that offers a phenomenal breakfast sandwich, which I always order on sourdough bread. It’s tangy, it’s chewy, and it just complements the sandwich filling perfectly.

So once I learned the basics of machine-assisted bread, I decided it was time to take the plunge and learn how to bake sourdough bread from scratch.

Starting with a sourdough starter

The first step was creating a sourdough starter, which I detail in my post here.

Bubbly active sourdough starter that is spilling over the edge of the jar it's in.

Over the course of several days, you mix flour and water in a jar and let it sit. It eventually captures yeast from the air in your kitchen and that yeast thrives in the starter. Essentially, the starter becomes a living thing that requires regular feeding and maintenance.

I wasn’t having the greatest luck with creating a bubbly, active starter, but I at least had something. I later learned from a friend who used to work in a bakery that the local climate is not great for sourdough starters, and tweaking my starter to include some whole wheat flour might solve that problem. And it did!

I also learned that, as long as the starter is regularly fed and taken care of, it gets stronger over time. My starter is a few years old now and when I give it a good feeding, it easily doubles in size—whereas in the first year of its life, a good feeding would result in maybe a twenty percent increase in size.

Learning how to bake sourdough bread from scratch

Once you’ve got a good starter going, it’s pretty easy to make bread.

There’s definitely a lot of fear about whether or not things are going right, but I’ve learned if I just trust the process and follow the directions, things will turn out just fine.

I’ve outlined the steps to making sourdough bread from scratch below, and again in the recipe card at the bottom of the post.

How to bake sourdough bread from scratch

The first thing to know about making sourdough bread is that it takes a long time. In addition to the weeks (minimum) of building up a healthy starter, the actual process of baking bread takes two days—or one day if you get up really and bake bread late at night.

Beyond time, there are really only two other things you need—a Dutch oven and a kitchen scale.

When I bought a Dutch oven a few years back, they were expensive. I got it on a massive sale and then had store points to get it even cheaper. But something must have happened, like there’s suddenly more supply than demand, because prices have fallen and they’re quite cheap now.

Here’s a decently priced Dutch oven on Amazon. It can seem like a steep investment for making bread, but I’ve found I use my Dutch oven quite often for things like soups, stews, pasta sauces, and canning recipes that require a large pot (such as when making salsa).

Step one: Making the dough

Mid-day to early evening of the day before you want your bread, you need to feed your starter. If you’re new to sourdough starters, you can find out how to make and feed one in this post. The goal is that once the starter gets really bubbly and active and rises from the feeding, we then scoop some of that out to make the sourdough.

We’ll start by putting 50g of bubbly, active starter in a large bowl, along with 330g of water. Mix this with a fork until it becomes incorporated.

Then add 9g of salt, 125g whole wheat flour, and 375g all-purpose flour. I use a mix of whole wheat and white flour because it works well for my local climate. You can certainly use only all-purpose flour. If you’re outside of Canada, you may want to use bread flour instead of all-purpose flour. (In Canada, all-purpose flour is closer to bread flour in the US and other countries.)

Mix this all with your fork until it becomes a shaggy ball. You’ll likely need to then go in with your hands to incorporate it a little better and make a ball.

Place the ball back in the bowl and cover it with plastic wrap or a towel and let it rest for at least half an hour.

Step two: Pinch and fold

After the resting time is over, take the ball of dough out of the bowl and “pinch and fold” the dough. Grab a hefty pinch from the side, stretch it out, and fold it into the top of the dough ball. Rotate the ball about 1/6 to 1/3 and do it again. Keep doing this until you’ve gone around and pinched and folded the entire thing. Be careful not to tear the dough—sometimes it’s more flexible than others, so work with the dough and its capabilities.

Sourdough dough that has been pinched and folded.

Put it back in the bowl—pinched side down—and cover it again. Let it rest overnight, or about 10-12 hours.

Step three (the next morning): Pinch and fold again

The next day, the dough should have roughly doubled in size. I find my dough rarely doubles, but it does increase in size, so don’t panic if yours doesn’t expand as much.

Remove the dough ball from the bowl and place it on a floured countertop pinched side up. Do another round of pinch and folds.

Flip it back over so the pinched side is down, and let it rest on the counter (or in the bowl again), covered with a towel, for 30 minutes.

Step four: Yes, pinch and fold one more time, plus start the oven

Flip the dough ball and pinch and fold. This time let it rest seam side up, preferably in a bowl, covered with a towel, for 30-60 minutes.

Sourdough resting inside a towel, sitting in a bowl.

While the dough is resting, crank your oven up to 450 Fahrenheit.

Step five: Put it in the oven

Transfer the dough ball to a piece of parchment paper.

Make a few shallow cuts along the top of the dough. I typically do a north, east, south, west pattern, but sometimes do three parallel lines. Whatever you do is up to you.

Raw sourdough loaf with shallow cuts in the surface, sitting on parchment paper.

Grip the edges of the parchment paper to move the dough—lift it and put it in the Dutch oven and place the lid on top.

Put the Dutch oven in the oven and immediately turn the temperature down to 425 Fahrenheit. Bake for 20 minutes, remove the lid, and bake for 40 more minutes. The loaf should have a nice brown crust, but if it doesn’t, bake a little longer until the colour is achieved, checking every five minutes.

Remove the Dutch oven from the oven and carefully gripping the edges of the parchment paper, remove the loaf from the Dutch oven and let it cool on a wire rack.

Step six: Enjoy!

Allow the loaf to cool for at least an hour, but cooling to room temperature is even better. If you cut it too soon, some of the moisture could escape via steam and leave you with a drier, denser loaf.

Sourdough is best stored in an airtight container at room temperature. Storing it in the fridge and lead to some tough chewiness.

If it happens to be pumpkin season, pumpkin butter makes a great topping for your sourdough bread.

Branching out from basic sourdough bread

Once you’ve got the basic loaf nailed, the options are pretty limitless from there.

For example, I’ve done (and have posts) on these:

In the next week or so, I’m hoping to try making some sourdough focaccia—I’m eyeing this recipe from Alexandra’s Kitchen as a template—and hope to post about my success soon. I’ve also been interested in making pasta and I found a fairly simple recipe for sourdough spaetzle from Amy Bakes Bread that I’m going to try and tweak (and hopefully post about soon too).

Sourdough Bread

Chewy, tangy, and oh-so-delicious—sourdough bread seems complicated but is surprisingly simple to make.

5 from 1 vote

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 14

Cook Time 1

Course Bread

Cuisine bread

Equipment

1 Dutch Oven

Ingredients

50 g Bubbly, active sourdough starter
330 g Water (1⅓ cup + 1 Tbsp)
9 g Salt (1½ tsp)
125 g Whole wheat flour (can round to 1 cup)
375 g All-purpose flour (can round to 3¼ cups)

Instructions

This recipe starts the night before and concludes the next day.

The night before:

Whisk starter and water together in a large bowl. Mix in flour and salt with a fork until the dough becomes stiff and shaggy. Finish mixing with your hands.
Cover with a damp towel or plastic wrap and rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.
After resting, work the dough into a ball using the "pinch and fold" method. Grab a pinch of dough at the edge and fold it / press it into the middle of the ball. Rotate the bowl a bit and do it again, repeating until you've gone all the way around. The dough will feel tighter as you do this.
Cover with a damp towel or plastic wrap and let it rise overnight at room temperature, about 10-12 hours.

The next day:

After 10-12 hours, the dough should double in size. Don't panic if it doesn't; while mine does get larger, it certainly doesn't double in size. A lot of this comes down to local climate factors and my local climate is not amenable to sourdough. Sometimes if you leave it longer, it will rise some more, so feel free to do this too.
Sprinkle flour on your work surface, like a counter or table. Scoop the dough out of the bowl and onto the work surface. Use the pinch and fold method to start shaping the dough into a ball.
Once you've gone around the whole ball, flip it over so the pinched seam is down. Cover with a towel and let rest for 30 minutes.
Flip it over again so the seam is up. Pinch and fold the dough one more time.
Line a bowl with a dry towel and sprinkle the towel with flour. Let the dough ball rest in the towel, seam side up and with the towel edges covering it, for thirty minutes to an hour. The dough should rise some more, but again local climate may give you different results.
Preheat oven to 450℉.
Cut a sheet of parchment paper larger than your dough. Place the parchment over the dough and flip the bowl so the dough is now resting on the parchment in your hand. Set it down on the counter and with a sharp knife, make some shallow cuts in the top surface. For example, you could do four shallow cuts at north, east, south, and west points (or 3, 6, 9, and 12 on the clock), or some parallel lines across the top of the loaf.
Grabbing the edges of the parchment paper, lift the dough and place it into the dutch oven and put the lid on.
Reduce oven heat to 425℉ and put the dutch oven in on the centre rack.
Bake for 20 minutes. Remove the lid. Bake for an additional 40 minutes. If the bread doesn't seem ready, bake for ten more minutes.
Transfer to a wire rack and let cool for at least an hour before slicing.
Sourdough is best stored in an airtight container at room temperature.

Keyword Sourdough, sourdough bread, sourdough starter

How to Make Sourdough Bagels (with Three Flavour Variations!)

Posted on May 20, 2024May 20, 2024 by craig

Over the last few years I’ve fallen in love with bagels for breakfast again.

I remember when the bagel craze hit Canada in the 1990s—there were bagel shops popping up all over the place. There was one near church and every Sunday after church my mom, my sister, and I would go there for lunch, and then on the way out we’d buy a dozen bagels and cream cheese so I could have breakfast for the coming week.

My favourite bagel at the time (and perhaps still is) was chocolate chip. That particular bagel store also made chocolate chip cream cheese. So every Sunday I’d head home with a dozen chocolate chip bagels and chocolate chip cream cheese.

I remember one particular Sunday where we decided not to have lunch, but rather my mom just sent me in to get my bagels for the week. The girl at the checkout counter packing my order seemed to hesitate when I said I wanted a dozen chocolate chip bagels. And when I also asked for two containers of chocolate chip cream cheese, she said, “Do your parents know you’re buying only chocolate chip?”

I think there was some implicit bias that chocolate shouldn’t be for breakfast. However, if a little dash of chocolate is going to make me eat a bagel and cream cheese and keep me full until lunch, what’s the harm in that?

So when I started creating a sourdough starter last year, one thing I was particularly interested in was making my own bagels—especially chocolate chip ones.

The Basic Sourdough Bagel Recipe

The first thing to master is the basic sourdough bagel recipe, which is not all too different from a basic sourdough bread recipe.

The full recipe is below, but in a nutshell, you mix up the ingredients the night before, let it rise overnight, form into bagels the next morning, and then boil and bake them to golden brown perfection.

Flavour Variations

Once you’ve mastered the basic recipe and done it once or twice, then the door opens to tweaking with flavour and toppings to get what you most desire. This can include mixing ingredients in with the dough the night before, or mixing ingredients in the next morning, or sprinkling something on top before baking them.

Here are the three that I’ve tackled:

Chocolate chip sourdough bagels
Cheddar and hot banana pepper sourdough bagels
Sun-dried tomato and basil sourdough bagels

All of them turned out super delicious. Chocolate chip is great with a thick smear of cream cheese, and the cheddar/pepper and tomato/basil ones make great breakfast sandwiches (with egg, bacon, mayonnaise, and a marmalade or hot pepper jelly).

How to Make Chocolate Chip Bagels

When tweaking the basic bagel recipe, the question I always have to ask myself is: When is it safe to add ingredients to the dough?

Since chocolate chips are stored at room temperature and shouldn’t spoil being in the dough overnight, I added them in during the initial mixing stage.

I prefer using mini chocolate chips, but if all you can find is regular size, roughly chopping them with a knife can make a wonderful difference. As for what kind of chocolate, I go with semi-sweet, but choose your favourite. Something tells me dark chocolate would go great with some butter and served with black coffee.

I went with 100g of chocolate chips, but if you like it a little sparser or a little denser, feel free to adjust to your taste.

How to Make Cheddar and Hot Banana Pepper Bagels

This is again a recipe variation that you can change to what you find locally and what your specific tastes are. If you prefer hotter peppers like jalapeño, or if you prefer fresh peppers (whereas I used pickled), go with the one you like best. I use cheddar because I always have it on hand and it’s the cheapest cheese at the store, but if you’ve got a nice sharp dry cheese in your fridge looking for a use, this might be the one.

I was again faced with the question of when to add my ingredients. Since my banana peppers are pickled, I chopped them up a little more and tossed them in with the dough the night before. If I was using fresh peppers, I likely would have mixed them in the next day.

For the cheese, I definitely did that the next day. Cheese at room temperature in a moist environment does not sound like good news.

How to Make Sun-Dried Tomato and Basil Bagels

That eternal question of when to add the extra ingredients arises here again.

My tomatoes technically aren’t sun-dried, they’re dehydrator-dried, but they would work pretty similarly. A dehydrated / dried food in a moist environment will absorb the moisture, and you don’t want anything taking moisture away from your dough or else it might not rise properly. Additionally, now-moist tomato pieces at room temperature overnight does not sound good. So, I added these the following morning.

Since I was using dried basil from our garden, it was a similar issue, so I added it the next morning.

Stocking Up On Bagels

Much like when I went to that bagel store after church and stocked up, back in March I had a couple weeks off work and decided to stock my freezer with bagels. The batch makes eight bagels and I managed to get six batches done—48 bagels—so I enjoyed them for quite a while, and I think I still have a few kicking around in the freezer.

If only I could get some of that chocolate chip cream cheese, then my morning routine would be perfect.

Sourdough Bagels (with flavour variations!)

With a little bit of planning and patience, you can bake up some soft and delicious sourdough bagels to bring some sunshine to your morning breakfast!

5 from 2 votes

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 15

Cook Time 25

Course Bread, Breakfast

Servings 8

Equipment

Kitchen Scale (measurements are provided if you don't have a scale)
Large Bowl
Plastic Wrap
Large Pot
Baking Sheet
Parchment Paper

Ingredients

150 g Active Sourdough Starter (about 3/4 cup)
250 g Warm Water (about 1 cup and 2 Tbsp)
24 g White Sugar (about 2 Tbsp)
500 g Bread Flour, or All-Purpose Flour if you're in Canada (about 4 cups and 2 Tbsp)
9 g Salt (about 1 1/2 tsp)
Cooking Spray
1 Tbsp Honey (optional)
Toppings like sesame seeds, poppy seeds, and bagel seasoning (optional)

Instructions

Making the Dough

In a large bowl with plenty of room for the dough to rise later, whisk together the sourdough starter, water, and sugar. I find it best to whisk with a fork.
Add flour and salt. Whisk with fork until a rough dough is formed, then mix by hand until no lumps remain. The dough will be fairly dry at this point.
Cover the bowl / dough with a damp towel and let rest for an hour.
Work the dough into a smooth ball. I find it easiest to pick up the dough and smooth it with my hands, rolling it over frequently in my hands. Only do this for about twenty seconds so you don't overwork the dough.

Bulk Rise

Spray a piece of plastic wrap with cooking spray and use it to cover the bowl. The sprayed side is down so if the dough rises and touches the plastic wrap, it won't stick. Let rise 10-12 hours at room temperature, or 8-10 hours if you're in a warmer climate or keep your house warm.
Sourdough is as much an art as it is a science. The more you make sourdough, the better you'll be at recognizing when it's ready. Because my climate is dry, I let it rise the full twelve hours.
Since I do a full twelve hours, I do this as an overnight rise. If you're in a warm and humid environment and your dough takes about 8 hours to rise, you could do this as a same-day project.

Shape the Bagels and Second Rise

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Give it a quick spritz of cooking spray.
Divide the dough into eight even balls. You can do this with the scale for a more exact measurement; I usually eyeball it. Roll each piece into a ball and let them all rest on the baking sheet for about fifteen minutes.
Shape the bagels. I poke a hole through the ball of dough and then insert a finger from the other side, twirling my fingers around each other to stretch out the bagel hole. I find the bagels "close up" the hole, so if you like a hole in your bagel, make it a little large knowing it'll get smaller in the next few steps.
Cover bagels with a damp towel and let rest at room temperature for twenty minutes.

Boiling Bagels

While the bagels are resting, fill a large pot with water and bring it to a boil. Stir in the honey. This will give the bagels a bit of color. (If you're vegan or allergic to honey, you can omit this.)
While doing this, preheat the oven to 425 F.
When bagels have rested and water is boiling, add the bagels (two or three at a time) to the pot. Boil for thirty seconds on each side. The bagels usually float, but if they're at the bottom of the pot, give them a nudge with a slotted spoon to ensure it's not sticking to the bottom of the pot.
This step gives the bagels a thin crust, which prevents it from ballooning like a loaf of bread when baking.
When boiled, transfer back to the baking sheet and boil the next batch.
Optional: When the bagels are cool enough to touch, you could dip them in bagel toppings like sesame seeds, poppy seeds, or bagel seasoning.
I usually do not do this as plain sourdough bagels are quite nice.

Baking the Bagels

Place the baking sheet in the middle of the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes.
Optional: After removing them from the oven, you can flip the bagels over and bake for 2 minutes more. This will give colour to the bagel bottoms. I don't always do this because when I flip them sometimes they look toasty on the bottom already.
Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Notes

Flavour Variations:

Chocolate Chip Bagels

Add 100g of mini chocolate chips to the initial stage when adding flour and salt, so they get worked in nicely. If you don’t have mini chocolate chips, you can roughly chop regular sized chocolate chips. I use semi-sweet, but use any sweetness you prefer. You can also add more or less chocolate chips, to your preference.

Cheddar and Banana Pepper Bagels

This is a surprisingly good combination! You can use any amount of peppers and cheese to your preference. You can swap out banana peppers for any hot pepper you prefer. If using pickled peppers, chop them finely and add them in the initial step with the flour and salt. If using fresh peppers, add them the next day when working the dough into eight balls. Work the dough a little more than usual to work the peppers in. If adding cheese, add a little bit when dividing the dough into eight balls, again, working the dough a little extra to work the cheese in. Reserve some cheese to sprinkle on top of the bagels right before baking.

Sun-dried Tomato and Basil Bagels

Add sun-dried tomatoes and basil the next day when working the dough into eight balls, working the dough a little extra so the ingredients mix in. You can use any amount of tomatoes and basil to your preference.

Keyword bagels, Sourdough, sourdough bagels, sourdough starter

How to make a Sourdough Starter

Posted on May 9, 2023March 3, 2025 by craig

I’d tried to get into baking over the last few years. We got a second-hand bread machine from my husband’s uncle and I was excited to start on the journey…but I just never really got into it. I was never really happy with what the bread machine gave me.

After letting that goal rest for a while, I decided to give it another try, but rather than look at the tools I have and figure out what I can do with them (like looking through bread machine recipes till I find an interesting one), I took the opposite approach and decided what I wanted to make and then figured out how to make it happen (in other words, I decided I wanted to make sourdough and I then had to figure out how to do it).

The key to sourdough—and the core element in its unique taste—is an active sourdough starter.

What is a sourdough starter?

A sourdough starter is basically fermented flour.

It’s bubbly and requires some care to keep it healthy and active.

To create it, you mix flour and water and cultivate natural yeasts. These yeasts are all around us—in the air and on surfaces and on us. Thus, each sourdough starter will have its own taste profile and its activity level might vary from other starters.

I used to think that fermented foods—like a sourdough starter—all came down to science. While, yes, there is an element of science to it, fermenting foods is often more of an art. You try something, you experiment, you do a bit of guesswork…but as long as you’re within the general guidelines of fermentation, your experiments are typically safe.

What is sourdough starter used for?

Since sourdough starter is filled with natural yeasts, it takes the place of yeast in breads that require some rise.

In the process of cultivating your sourdough starter, you regularly throw out some of the starter—this is usually called discard and it has its own uses in various things.

What you’ll find on this site so far, and in the very near future, include:

As this site continues to grow, so too will the list of sourdough recipes. A good tip if you’re searching for more is to check out the Recipe Index page.

How easy or difficult is it to care for my sourdough starter?

It’s extremely easy to create and care for a sourdough starter, all it requires is a little bit of patience.

After you’ve created your starter using the steps below, you’ll want to regularly care for it to maintain it. If you’re storing your starter at room temperature on the kitchen counter, you’ll likely want to feed it and care for it on a daily basis, though I have gone every second day and it’s been fine. If you’re storing your starter in the fridge, you’ll want to feed and care for it on a weekly basis.

Sometimes your starter will get a strange smell. Mine will often smell like acetone (nail polish remover). This can mean your yeast is hungry for fresh flour.

When my starter gets this smell, I make sure to take care of it very well for a couple days to reduce or remove the smell. From what I’ve seen, if this smell is present when using the starter, it does not affect the taste or smell of the final baked bread or cookies.

You may develop mould in your starter jar. If you do, immediately scoop or scrape it out. (I had a tiny bit of mould once and it was on the half-dry starter clinging to the inside of the jar, so I scraped it out.) Fermenting foods, like what you do when making a sourdough starter, creates a thriving colony of beneficial microorganisms that do a good job of keeping out the bad microorganisms. When I got that bit of mould, I kept a close eye on everything to see if the mould would return or spread—it never did. If your mould comes back or if it’s something more serious like black mould, toss it all out and create a new starter. It’s better to be safe than sorry.

How to Make a Sourdough Starter

It’s pretty simple. All you need for equipment and ingredients are:

Digital kitchen scale (like this one); you can use measuring cups if you really want to, but going by weight is best
A large glass jar; I used a one-litre mason jar
All-purpose flour
Water

This process takes several days.

Day one

In a clean jar, mix 60 grams of flour and 60 grams of warm water. (If you prefer using measuring cups, it’s 1/2 cup of loosely-packed flour and 1/4 cup of warm water.) Cover with plastic wrap or a lid and let it sit on the counter at room temperature for 24 hours.

Day two

Look at the starter to search for any signs of bubbles. You may or may not have them forming yet. Either way, leave the jar on the counter another 24 hours.

Day three

Remove and discard about half of the jar’s contents. Add in 60 grams of all-purpose flour and 60 grams of warm water. Stir until smooth, cover, and let sit on the counter.

Days four, five, and six

Each day, remove and discard about half the jar’s contents. Add in 60 grams of all-purpose flour and 60 grams of warm water. Stir until smooth, cover, and let sit on the counter.

By now you should be seeing bubbles in your starter. You should also see that the starter rises in the hours after you feed it and by 24 hours later it’s collapsed back down. You can wrap a rubber band around the jar at the low level to keep an eye on the rise and fall.

Day seven and onward

Your starter should be active now. The level of activeness will depend on the yeast in your starter, the temperature of the room, your local climate (such as humidity), and several other factors, most of which are beyond your control.

Now you can go about feeding and maintaining your starter on a regular schedule. Each time you feed it, first discard half of the jar’s contents, then add 60 grams flour and 60 grams warm water.

If you’re keeping your starter on your kitchen counter, you should feed it every day. However, that requires a lot of investment of flour and your time, which is fine if you’re baking regularly. If you’re not baking quite that frequently, you can store the starter in the fridge and feed it weekly.

A Few Tips and Troubleshooting

If you got absolutely no bubbles and the starter was a total flop, I’d suggest looking at what might have prevented the starter from growing. Is it perhaps too cold in your kitchen? Did you store it in a warm place like the oven and accidentally turn the oven on one time (and thus killed the yeast)? If you can figure out the cause, discard your starter and try again. If you can’t figure out the cause, discard your starter and try again—but perhaps try with a new bag of flour in case that was somehow the cause of your issue.
Don’t be disappointed if your starter is a little underwhelming. As long as it’s forming bubbles, you have a healthy and active starter. When I got started on this project, I got very little rise. Everything I read online said that when you feed the starter it will double in size, but at best I was getting a 25% rise. The yeast culture in your starter will get stronger over time as you continue to feed and maintain it. Nowadays, just a few months later, my starter will triple in size rather than just double.
If you’re continuing to have underwhelming results, you could try mixing in some whole wheat flour. I don’t know the explanation, but a baker friend told me it has something to do with how the flour absorbs moisture. In my research I’ve also found Canadian all-purpose flour is different from all-purpose flour in the rest of the world, which might be why I was having less-than-expected success. I now use about 12 grams of whole wheat flour and 48 grams of all purpose flour, for a total of 60 grams. (It’s a 1:4 ratio of the two flours.) This may be partly why my starter now triples in size rather than doubling.
You might get weird smells! Mine smells like acetone (nail polish remover) when it’s left too long. You might also get a murky liquid forming on top that smells like old gym socks—this is called “hooch”. Both of these are normal and have no ill effects on your starter, and the solution to both is being rigorous with your feeding until it goes away. I store my starter in the fridge since I bake about once a week and when I take it out, it reeks of acetone. I leave it on the counter for a few days, feeding it daily, and it’s soon smelling fresh again and is ready to be used. However, if you don’t have the few days of planning like I do, it should still be fine. I’ve baked a loaf with starter that had a strong acetone smell and the bread was completely fine.
After scooping out starter to make some baked goods, I usually feed it right away and I give it the same weight that I took out. For example, if I do a sourdough bread, my usual recipe calls for 50 grams of starter—so after scooping it out, I’ll put 25 grams of flour and 25 grams of warm water into my jar to bring it back up to the usual weight/volume.
You may want to purchase in a jar with a swing-top enclosure. I’ve got one of these, as you can see in the photos on this post. Instead of locking it down to close it, I wrap a rubber band around the locking pieces. This holds it closed but since it’s not airtight, if the starter grows far too much, it can escape and overflow (and so I keep the jar in a bowl to catch the overflow).

Now that you have a healthy and active sourdough starter, you can dive into the oddly-addicting world of sourdough baking!

Sourdough Starter

An active sourdough starter is the key ingredient for sourdough bread and a whole host of other delicious recipes.

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 7

Course Bread

Equipment

1 Digital scale
1 Jar, about a litre in size

Ingredients

All-purpose flour
Water

Instructions

Day one:
In a clean jar, mix 60 grams of flour and 60 grams of warm water. (If you prefer using measuring cups, it's 1/2 cup of loosely-packed flour and 1/4 cup of warm water.) Cover with plastic wrap or a lid and let it sit on the counter at room temperature for 24 hours.
Day two:
Look at the starter to search for any signs of bubbles. You may or may not have them forming yet. Either way, leave the jar on the counter another 24 hours.
Day three:
Remove and discard about half of the jar's contents. Add in 60 grams of all-purpose flour and 60 grams of warm water. Stir until smooth, cover, and let sit on the counter.
Day four, five, and six:
Each day, remove and discard about half the jar's contents. Add in 60 grams of all-purpose flour and 60 grams of warm water. Stir until smooth, cover, and let sit on the counter.
By now you should be seeing bubbles in your starter. You should also see that the starter rises in the hours after you feed it and by 24 hours later it's collapsed back down. You can wrap a rubber band around the jar at the low level to keep an eye on the rise and fall.
Day seven and onward:
Your starter should be active now. The level of activeness will depend on the yeast in your starter, the temperature of the room, your local climate (such as humidity), and several other factors, most of which are beyond your control.
Now you can go about feeding and maintaining your starter on a regular schedule. Each time you feed it, first discard half of the jar's contents, then add 60 grams flour and 60 grams warm water.
If you're keeping your starter on your kitchen counter, you should feed it every day. However, that requires a lot of investment of flour and your time, which is fine if you're baking regularly. If you're not baking quite that frequently, you can store the starter in the fridge and feed it weekly.

Notes

Some folks, like myself, have found more success mixing flours. This might be partly due to how the flour is absorbing the water and the dryish climate here in Winnipeg affects it, or perhaps because all-purpose flour in Canada is different than in the rest of the world (so this might lead to different results than an American baking blog might experience), or it could be something else entirely. I use a 1:4 ratio of whole wheat and all-purpose flour. When adding in 60 grams of flour, this means 12 grams of whole wheat and 48 of all-purpose.

You might get weird smells. Mine commonly smells like acetone (nail polish remover) when it’s left too long. You might also get a murky liquid forming on top that smells like old gym socks—this is called “hooch”. Both of these are normal and have no ill effects on your starter, and the solution to both is being rigorous with your feeding until it goes away. I store my starter in the fridge since I bake about once a week and when I take it out, it reeks of acetone. I leave it on the counter for a few days, feeding it daily, and it’s soon smelling fresh again and is ready to be used. However, if you don’t have the few days of planning like I do, it should still be fine. I’ve baked a loaf with starter that had a strong acetone smell and the bread was completely fine.

Keyword sourdough bread, sourdough starter

How to Make Irish Potato Bread

Posted on April 5, 2023April 5, 2023 by craig

I’m a bit of a food experimenter—when I stumble across a recipe I’m curious about, I make sure I try it.

Irish potato bread was one of those things. I was perusing bread recipes, given my newfound love of making bread these past several months, and stumbled across a few references to this one.

It piqued my interest for a few reasons:

It’s an easy bread recipe that doesn’t rely on things like yeast and rising and proofing, so it’s easier for beginners like myself,
It uses up potatoes, and I’m always on the lookout for ways to utilize our massive garden harvest (we had 350 pounds of potatoes last year, and,
We have a friend with Irish heritage who we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with every year, so I’m always on the lookout for easy and delicious (and preferably healthy) Irish recipes.

I’ve made this twice now and it’s been fantastic both times and was an easy crowd-pleaser. I make this as an appetizer for an afternoon or evening meal, but I believe this is traditionally a breakfast food. I’ve always liked breakfast food better in the evening.

The consistency of Irish potato bread is sort of like a pancake, but it isn’t sweet like a pancake since there’s no sugar in it. Irish potato bread tastes fantastic on its own, but it also tastes great served with a dip (like Cheddar Guinness Dip) or if you’re not against mixing cuisines it tastes great with Italian cured meats.

Irish potato bread starts with, you guessed it, potatoes. Specifically, peeled, boiled, and mashed potatoes.

Even though this is an easy first step, you can make it easier on yourself if you want. You can use leftover mashed potatoes, so simply make too much for dinner the night before with the intention of using the leftovers for this. Or, like me, you can use home-canned potatoes, which are already fully cooked, and just need to be drained (and perhaps rinsed if the water was starchy) and mashed.

Since I used canned potatoes—one pint specifically—I didn’t have the full weight of potatoes required by the recipe below, so I did some math to figure out the new measurements of the rest of the ingredients. If you’re not comfortable with that kind of math, you might be best to stick to the measurements in the recipe, or, honestly, you can eyeball it. If you have approximately half the amount of potatoes, you could halve all the other ingredients. Since there’s no rising or proofing or more science-y aspects of baking, a ratio that’s a little off is likely all right.

From there you add in your melted butter, flour, and salt (if using unsalted butter). Mix it all together with a spoon and when it starts to come together and becomes too stiff to stir, switch to using your hands.

I’ve made this twice now. The first time the ingredients worked out great and the dough was perfect. The second time, it was far too wet and sticky and I had to add a considerable amount of extra flour. So, if needed, add some flour. (If you’re new to this kind of thing, add flour in small amounts at a time because it’s easy to add flour but impossible to remove it if you’ve added too much. It should be ever so slightly sticky to the touch, but should hold to itself more than to your hands—that’s the consistency you’re going for.)

From there you’ll want to transfer it to a floured surface. I’ve got a small spot on the counter that works well, but you can do it on a cutting board or something if that’s what you’ve got. Knead it just a little bit so it really comes together nicely in a ball.

Break the ball up into six smaller balls. That is, if you did the full recipe. Since my potatoes came out to about 2/3 of the required amount, I broke this into four smaller balls. Roll out each ball one at a time on the floured surface still it’s about half a centimetre thick. Since this isn’t a super fancy project, even just smashing it flat with the palm of your hand can work well too.

Once it’s flattened, slice up it up into squares or triangles or any other small bite-size shape that works.

Now it’s time to cook them up!

In a pan over medium heat, warm up some olive oil (or canola oil works too) and add a dollop of butter. When the butter has melted, add in as many pieces of dough fit comfortably on the bottom of the pan. Let it fry for a few minutes and then with tongs or a fork, flip them over and cook the other side. Like with pancakes, I find each successive batch goes a little quicker and a little smoother. You will likely need to add a little oil and butter between batches because it gets used up and absorbed by the bread.

Between batches, you’ll want to keep the cooked bread warm. Putting it in a bowl with a plate over top would work. I line my bowl with paper towel to absorb excess oil/butter.

Or, if you’re like me the other night, you can just put the bowl of cooked bread in front of your guests while you cook up the next batch—but be sure to grab some for yourself before it’s all gone!

We had a guest over and we were all hanging out in the kitchen while I was frying up the bread, so I put the bowl of cooked bread in front of my husband and our guest along with a bowl of cheddar Guinness dip, and we had a great time talking and eating while I cooked up more bread for all of us.

Irish Potato Bread

Simple and tasty, Irish Potato Bread is an excellent way to use up leftover mashed potatoes. It's great on its own, is perfect in a breakfast fry, and is a tasty appetizer with Cheddar Guinness Dip.

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 30

Cook Time 30

Course Bread

Cuisine Irish

Ingredients

750 g Potatoes
30 g Butter, melted (2 Tbsp)
1½ cups All-purpose flour (or any flour of your choice)
1 pinch Salt (omit if using salted butter)
Olive oil and extra butter for frying

Instructions

Peel, chop, boil, drain, and mash potatoes. Let sit until cool enough to handle. (If you have leftover mashed potatoes in your fridge, you can use that and skip this step. Alternatively, if you have home-canned potatoes, they're already fully cooked, so you can drain them and mash them.)
Add the remaining ingredients to the bowl. If you're adding extra ingredients (see notes), also add them to the bowl.
Mix with a spoon until it starts to come together and is difficult to mix. Continue mixing with your hands. The dough should be slightly sticky; if it's too sticky you can add extra flour until it feels like a good bread dough consistency. Knead for a few minutes on a floured surface.
Divide dough into several small balls. Working with one ball at a time, roll dough out on a floured surface (or smash down with your hands if you don't have a roller) and slice into squares or triangles. You want it somewhere between a quarter and half a centimetre in thickness.
Put a pan over medium heat on the stove and add in olive oil and extra butter. Working in batches, fry until one side is golden and then flip and fry until both sides are golden. This should take a few minutes per batch and will speed up as you go along. You might need to add extra oil or butter between batches.
When a batch is done, move to a bowl or dish with a lid to keep it warm until all the batches are done. I like to line the bowl with a paper towel to absorb some of the extra oil and butter.
Best served warm.

Notes

If you want to get creative with flavours, you can add in fine herbs, cheese, chopped bacon, or finely chopped vegetables. You can swap out the butter with flavoured/seasoned butter. If desired, you can dust the finished bread with cinnamon and sugar.

I’ve found this goes great with Cheddar Guinness Dip for an Irish appetizer.

Keyword Easy Bread, Irish Potato Bread

How to Make Jalapeño Cheddar Sourdough Bread (or with Other Hot Peppers)

Posted on March 27, 2023February 28, 2025 by craig

A few months ago I got myself going with a sourdough starter. A sourdough starter is basically fermented flour, and once you create this starter, you have to constantly feed it to keep it alive. And since so much work goes into keeping it alive, I’m always looking to try new recipes that use the sourdough starter. A lot of those recipes will end up on here, including sourdough bread, English muffin bread, and sourdough chocolate chip cookies.

(If you don’t have a sourdough starter yet, check out this post about starting and maintaining one.)

My sourdough starter—bubbly, active, and ready to use

In addition to having this sourdough starter to utilize, I also have several jars of pickled hot peppers from last year’s garden that need to be eaten before the fall harvest and a fresh batch of peppers—so that got me thinking about a cheddar and hot pepper sourdough bread!

What I’ve done here is a bit of a mishmash of two recipes—my existing sourdough recipe and a cheddar jalapeño sourdough recipe I found online. I didn’t really like the steps of the new recipe, so I adapted my existing recipe to make a tasty hybrid.

Sourdough is remarkably simple in terms of ingredients. It’s literally sourdough starter (which is flour and water), more water, more flour, and salt.

With the sourdough recipe I use, I start the dough the night before and then let it rest and rise overnight at room temperature. You can leave it on the counter, but I have a cat that loves anything made with flour, so I have to stick it in the microwave or oven so it stays safe from him.

Sorry for the poor lighting, I took this photo at 11:30 at night.

Theoretically, when the dough rests overnight, it should double in size. However, this is highly dependent on ideal local climate conditions and Winnipeg in the middle of winter is not an ideal climate. I’ve been told that Winnipeg in the summer isn’t ideal either. While I get some rise in my dough, it’s nowhere near double. So don’t panic if you don’t get the kind of rise you see on other blogs.

After resting overnight, it’s time to work in the peppers and cheese.

While this recipe is for jalapeño and cheddar sourdough, what I have on hand are pickled banana peppers. I like the taste of banana peppers better, but they’re also a lower on the Scoville scale, meaning they’re not as hot as jalapeño peppers—so if you like the sound of this recipe but you’re not sure if you can handle jalapeños, banana peppers might be the way to go.

(You can usually find pickled banana peppers in the condiments aisle of your grocery store, next to things like ketchup and mustard. If the jars are labelled with “mild” or “hot”, you’ll want to go with the hot ones. The mild ones can have the same heat level as bell peppers, which would be kind of pointless for this recipe.)

With the “pinch and fold” method, we start working the cheese and peppers into the dough. (Full directions on how to do this are in the recipe below.)

The original jalapeño cheddar sourdough recipe I looked up had the cheese and peppers mixed in with the dough at the very beginning. The end result would give cheese and peppers spotted throughout the loaf, whereas my method here results in a ribbon of cheese and peppers that runs through the whole loaf.

While I like the idea of cheese and peppers being spread throughout like little morsels of goodness, I didn’t like the idea of leaving the cheese (a dairy product) at room temperature overnight while the dough was resting. To be fair, that recipe had the dough in the fridge overnight, but if I’m having enough difficulty getting a rise out of my dough at room temperature, I’d have much poorer results in the fridge.

After resting for a bit we do another round of “pinch and folds” to work the cheese and peppers in a bit more. However, be a bit gentler at this stage. I found I’d ripped the dough in one spot and cheese started tumbling out; I hadn’t realized the cheese had migrated so close to the surface of the dough ball.

Now we let it rest one final time in a bowl lined with a towel and sprinkled with flour.

Toward the end of the 30-60 minute rest, we crank the oven up to 450 F.

Transfer the dough to some parchment paper—pinch seam side down—and cut some slits in it, then transfer the whole thing to a dutch oven.

Lower the heat to 425 F, then put the dutch oven (with the lid on) on the centre rack. Bake for 20 minutes, then remove the lid and bake for an additional 40 minutes. If it looks like it needs a little longer, you could give it an additional ten minutes. (When I pulled it out and later sliced into it, it looked like it could have used just a little bit longer. The addition of the cheese likely altered the baking time just a little bit.)

Fresh from the oven and smelling so good!

Transfer to a wire rack and let it cool for at least an hour before slicing into it.

This was my first time making a cheddar and hot pepper bread and I would absolutely make it again!

Sourdough is usually chewy, but this was chewy and extra soft. The tang of the hot peppers had worked its way into the rest of the bread, so even when I wasn’t biting into a pepper, I could taste them. The cheddar cooked perfectly—not so cooked that it’s crunchy, but cooked enough that it’s solid.

This tastes wonderful at room temperature with some butter, but would likely taste amazing toasted, buttered, and served alongside a spicy pasta dish.

Jalapeño Cheddar Sourdough Bread

Chewy sourdough bread with the zing of hot peppers and sharp cheddar makes for an irresistible snack.

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 14

Cook Time 1

Course Bread

Cuisine bread

Equipment

1 Dutch Oven

Ingredients

50 g Bubbly, active sourdough starter
330 g water (1⅓ cup + 1 Tbsp)
9 g salt (1½ tsp)
125 g Whole wheat flour (can round to 1 cup)
375 g All-purpose flour (can round to 3¼ cups)
¼ cup Jalapeño peppers, pickled or fresh, chopped (other hot peppers can be substituted; pickled banana peppers taste amazing here)
½ cup Cheddar cheese, shredded (go for an old/sharp cheddar)

Instructions

This recipe starts the night before and concludes the next day.
The night before, whisk starter and water together in a large bowl.
Mix in flour and salt with a fork until the dough becomes stiff and shaggy. Finish mixing with your hands.
Cover with a damp towel or plastic wrap and rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.
After resting, work the dough into a ball using the "pinch and fold" method. Grab a pinch of dough at the edge and fold it / press it into the middle of the ball. Rotate the bowl a bit and do it again, repeating until you've gone all the way around. The dough will feel tighter as you do this.
Cover with a damp towel or plastic wrap and let it rise overnight at room temperature, about 10-12 hours.
After 10-12 hours, the dough should double in size. Don't panic if it doesn't; while mine does get larger, it certainly doesn't double in size. A lot of this comes down to local climate factors and my local climate is not amenable to sourdough.
Sprinkle flour on your work surface, like a counter or table. Scoop the dough out of the bowl and onto the work surface. Spread the peppers and cheddar on top of the dough.
Use the pinch and fold method to start shaping the dough into a ball. Once you've gone around the whole ball, flip it over so the pinched seam is down. Cover with a towel and let rest for 30 minutes.
Flip it over again so the seam is up. Pinch and fold the dough one more time. If you pinch and fold too hard, you might rip the dough and cheese and peppers might tumble out, so be gentle.
Line a bowl with a dry towel and sprinkle the towel with flour. Let the dough ball rest in the towel, seam side up and with the towel edges covering it, for thirty minutes to an hour. The dough should rise some more, but again local climate may give you different results.
Preheat oven to 450℉.
Cut a sheet of parchment paper larger than your dough. Place the parchment over the dough and flip the bowl so the dough is now resting on the parchment in your hand. Set it down on the counter and with a sharp knife, make four shallow cuts at north, east, south, and west points (or 3, 6, 9, and 12 on the clock).
Grabbing the edges of the parchment paper, lift the dough and place it into the dutch oven and put the lid on.
Reduce oven heat to 425℉ and put the dutch oven in on the centre rack.
Bake for 20 minutes. Remove the lid. Bake for an additional 40 minutes. If the bread doesn't seem ready, bake for ten more minutes.
Transfer to a wire rack and let cool for at least an hour before slicing.

Keyword Bread, Sourdough