A friend clued me into a new sourdough method that promised to be pretty low effort but still resulted with great bread. I decided to give the method a try with a loaf using some sharp cheddar cheese and paprika.

Schedule

Using the lazy sourdough method is actually quite simple. The real key to this method is that you can use your unfed starter straight from the fridge without the need to make a levain. There’s also no autolyse which saves about 30 minutes.

Rough schedule:

• 8 hour bulk fermentation w/ 4x folds at 30 minute intervals
• 17 hour proof in the fridge

The exact schedule I used is at the bottom of this post.

Ingredients:

Dough

• 450g bread flour
• 50g dark rye flour
• 375g filtered water @ 90’F
• 100g unfed starter straight from fridge (100% hydration)
• 11g sea salt
• 100g sharp cheddar cheese, 1/4″ cubes
• 2 tsp paprika

Method:

After mixing the dough, I performed 4 stretch and folds within the first 2 hours. I let the dough bulk ferment at room temperature for a total of 8 hours.

Once the dough had doubled, I shaped the loaf and put it in a banneton that I liberally dusted with rice flour. I put the banneton in a vegetable bag and then placed it in the fridge for a 17 hour cold proof.

One hour before baking I started preheating the oven, with a dutch oven inside, to 450’F. When it was time to bake, I took the loaf straight from the fridge and placed it in the preheated dutch oven, gave it a quick score and then put it in the oven.

I baked the loaf at 450’F for 20 minutes covered, then removed the lid of the dutch oven and baked for an additional 32 minutes.

Result:

I was a little skeptical of how this would turn out since this method takes a lot of shortcuts, but the long bulk fermentation and even longer cold proof seemed to work extremely well. I really like cold proofing and this method is going to make me do it even more. Cold proofed dough is so much easier to score, plus your time table is a lot more flexible since it doesn’t go from under to over proofed in a span of 10 minutes.

The paprika gives this loaf an awesome caramel color and the cheddar cheese melting out of the loaf makes this look almost like a weird round volcano.

I feel like I nailed the amount of paprika and cheddar for my tastes. If you are doing this for the first time, I’d recommend using 1-1.5 tsp of paprika instead of 2 tsp.

100g of cheddar is a great amount to get a little bit in every bite. The cheese melted nicely throughout the loaf. The crumb is a little more open than I like, but I feel like part of that might have been that I under-scored the loaf slightly.

The flavor is amazing. It’s super savory and full of flavor. I had a couple slices to soak up some green chile stew for dinner and I think I found my new go-to soup bread.

My Baking Notes

• Ambient Temperature @ mixing: 75’F
• Mixed @ 1:00pm on April 5th
• Dough was 78’F at mixing
• 4 stretch and folds in first 2 hours
• Started proof @ 9:00pm on April 5th (8 hour bulk fermentation at room temp)
• Preheated oven @ 1:00pm on April 6th (17 hour cold proof)
• Into oven @ 2:00pm