I’ve been devouring so much bread lately. Between garlic bread, soups and sandwiches, I can hardly keep bread more than a few days before I need to start planning my next bake. I like having some savory bread around since they’re awesome to dunk into soup. One that I really remembered loving in the past was a paprika + cheddar loaf I baked. I didn’t have any cheddar but I did have a big block of pepperjack at my disposal…

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.

Schedule: Here’s a link to the lazy sourdough method.

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

Ingredients:

Dough

• 450g bread flour
• 50g whole wheat flour
• 375g filtered water @ 87’F
• 100g unfed starter straight from fridge (100% hydration)
• 11g sea salt
• 125g diced pepperjack cheese
• 2 tsp Smoked 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:

This bake went perfectly from mixing all the way through baking. I added the paprika and pepperjack cheese in during the first fold so it wouldn’t inhibit the mixing and the start of gluten development.

The paprika gives this bread an amazing color. The crumb and crust are both a nice burnt orange color. The smokiness from the paprika also comes through really well when it’s baking.

The amount of cheese I used was perfect for this loaf. You get a little bit of the pepperjack flavor in every bite. It’s not overly spicy and compliments the paprika extremely well.

Next time I might try to score a little bit deeper so it rises better while baking, but that’s really the only thing I’d change for next time.

My Baking Notes

• Ambient Temperature: 73’F
• Mixed @ 1:05pm on October 13th
• Water temp: 87’F
• Dough was 83’F after mixing
• 4 stretch and folds over first 90 minutes
• Started proof in fridge @ 9:00pm
• Into oven @ 2:00pm on October 14th