Wild Yeast

Like the timeless little black dress, a good basic sourdough recipe is the consummate staple: perfect all on its own, but a stunning platform for any embellishment that strikes your mood. This is Norwich Sourdough with rosemary and roasted garlic cloves… garlic bread without all the butter!

In general, “chunky” additions such as nuts, seeds, fruits and vegetables are best added at the end of mixing to avoid interfering with the development of the gluten. Mix the dough to, or a little past, the desired level of gluten development, then mix in the additions just until they are evenly distributed.

The easy roasted garlic recipe was adapted from the always-inspiring Simply Recipes. I roasted mine until it was very soft, so the cloves largely disintegrated into the dough with mixing, giving the bread a strong overall garlic flavor. Roasting until barely fork-tender would allow them to maintain their identity. Either way, this is a garlic -lover’s bread, and the classic pairing of rosemary and garlic never disappoints.

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This month the Babes were treated to the perfect summer bread: soft, buttery burger buns, chosen by Sara.

Because timing is not my strong suit, my buns did not get the chance to hold the burgers they were intended to. They did make lovely almond butter sandwiches, though. And I’m thinking the sleek and slightly sweet dough could also make fantastic cinnamon rolls…

The recipe was quick and easy. I made a few tweaks and a few notes:

• I measured the flour according to the weight given in the recipe (625 grams), but I wonder if this was too much, since the equivalent volume was given as 4 cups. This would make a cup equal to 156 grams — on the high side for sure.
• I substituted 10.4 grams (about 3 1/3 teaspoons) instant yeast for the 4.5 teaspoons of active dry yeast in the recipe.
• I measured a tablespoon of Kosher salt, the amount the recipe called for, and found that it weighed 15 grams. I cut that back to 12.5 grams to make the salt 2% of the flour weight, which I usually find to be about right.
• Instead of rolling out the dough and cutting it into squares, I divided it into 12 pieces of 100 grams each and rolled them into balls that I flattened slightly with the palm of my hand.
• I proofed for 30 minutes as directed by the recipe, but this was too short for the temperature of my kitchen (yes, it can be cool on July mornings in Northern California). The crumb, while soft, was a little dense. This could also be because I had too much flour.
• I baked both sheets of buns at once, using my oven’s convection setting at 375F for 16 minutes.

You need to check out the other beautiful Babes’ buns — you’ll find links to slider buns, barbecued buns, square buns, rounds buns, sunflower seed buns, buns, buns… on my lower right sidebar!

Crusty boules and batards are wonderful, but do you sometimes want a nice soft sandwich bread to replicate that timeless, comfortable and comforting PB & J of your childhood? This should do it, and it’s a lot better than Wonder Bread (because it’s made with dough — and sourdough! —  not batter).

As with most pan breads, removing the loaves from the pans once their structure is set, and letting them finish the bake standing directly on the stone, helps the side crusts brown. If you don’t have a stone, you can place them right on the oven rack if you don’t mind a few grooves on the bottom of the loaves, or on a baking sheet that has been preheated with the oven.

Size matters! If your loaf pans are not 8.5 x 4.5 inches, you will need to adjust the amount of dough proportionally, with respect to the volume of the pan, to avoid loaves that are too short or tall. If your pans are 9 x 5 inches, use about 880 grams of dough per loaf.

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