Category: Bread

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

Posted on 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 hours
Cook Time 25 minutes
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 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:

  • Basic sourdough bread (coming soon)
  • Jalapeno cheddar sourdough bread
  • Sourdough bagels (coming soon)
  • Sourdough chocolate chip bagels (coming soon)
  • English muffin bread using discard (coming soon)
  • Sourdough chocolate chip cookies using discard (coming soon)

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 days
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 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 minutes
Cook Time 30 minutes
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 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, I’ll post directions in an upcoming post. Once I do that, I’ll link to it here.)

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.)

This already smells so good

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.

One final rest before we bake it.

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 hours
Cook Time 1 hour
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