Living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, we live and breathe green chile. There’s nothing better on a cold Fall or Winter day than a hearty bowl of green chile stew. This bread takes some fresh roasted green chile plus some pepperjack cheese and turns an ordinary loaf into something you can’t stop eating. Whether you eat this with stew, make a pressed sandwich or just eat it as-is, this will surely be a favorite!

Schedule: I based this loaf off of my sourdough schedule.

Since this is a 100% naturally leavened bread, I created a levain with my sourdough starter that was last fed 24 hours prior. This levain provides enough for 3 loaves of bread, plus a little extra to keep your starter going.

30 minutes before mixing the levain, salt and other ingredients into the dough, I performed an autolyse by mixing the water and flour together.

Ingredients:

Levain

Started at 8am with the following ingredients. Mix everything together and loosely cover and let it ferment for about 8 hours.

• 50g unfed sourdough starter (last feeding was 24 hours prior)
• 200g filtered water @ 85-90’F
• 200g King Arthur bread flour
• 50g King Arthur whole wheat flour

Dough

• 410g King Arthur bread flour
• 320g filtered water @ 90-95’F
• 108g levain
• 11g sea salt
• 1/2 tsp green chile flakes (optional)
• 75g roasted medium-hot green chiles, diced
• 75g pepperjack cheese, cut into small pieces, roughly 1/4″ cubes

Toppings

After transferring the dough to the dutch oven, but before putting the lid on and baking it, I add the following toppings:

• 20g roasted medium-hot green chiles, diced
• 20g pepperjack cheese, shredded

Method:

After mixing the dough, I performed 4 stretch and folds within the first 2-4 hours.

I baked the loaf in a preheated dutch oven at 450’F for 38 minutes covered, then removed the lid of the dutch oven and baked for an additional 14 minutes.

Result:

The taste is phenomenal. I did just about everything with this bread from making toast for breakfast to using it in a hearty pressed sandwich. It’s also a great base for garlic bread which I dipped into soups and stews.

If I were to do anything different next time, I might wait to add the chopped green chile and shredded pepperjack cheese to the top of the loaf until after the initial 38 minutes covered. The cheese browned a little more than I would have liked.