Some friends of ours are having us over for soups this weekend. I knew bread would be my contribution to the meal but was on the fence about what ingredients to use. My wife suggested paprika and then the ideas really started flowing. We had an unopened jar of roasted bell peppers in the pantry and my jar of New Mexico red chile powder was also staring me down…

Schedule: I based this loaf off of my overnight bakers yeast schedule.

Since this bread got an overnight bulk fermentation, I only needed to use a scant 1/4 tsp (~0.8g) of bakers yeast. I had to make sure to mix it extremely well in the beginning to make sure the yeast got thoroughly incorporated.

30 minutes before mixing the bakers yeast and salt into the dough, I performed an autolyse by mixing the water, spices and flours together.

Ingredients:

Dough

• 1000g bread flour
• 780g filtered water @ 90-95’F
• 22g sea salt
• 1/4 tsp yeast
• 10g paprika
• 5g NM red chile powder
• 100g roasted red bell pepper, chopped (added at first fold)

Method:

After mixing in the salt and yeast, I performed 3 stretch and folds within the first 90 minutes. The dough stretched extremely well and was already rising by the time I went to bed that evening. I added the roasted peppers during the first fold.

By the time I woke up the dough had nearly reached the top of my bucket and had some really big bubbles forming on top. The dough was also a nice light red color thanks to the paprika and red chile powder.

I started preheating the oven right after I started proofing the loaves. After roughly an hour proof I baked the loaves in preheated dutch ovens at 450’F for 20 minutes covered, then removed the lid of the dutch oven and baked for an additional 31 minutes.

Result:

The loaves both rose very well in the oven and developed a beautiful caramelized crust. The olive oil from the red peppers might have kept the dough from venting as well as my loaves normally do in the oven. They’re a little uneven and look more like blobs erupting from the bread, but obviously that doesn’t affect the flavor.

The crumb is a nice red hue throughout and an even distribution of red peppers. Texture-wise, it’s nice and airy without having too big of holes.

The combination of the red chile, paprika and roasted peppers gives this bread an extremely earthy flavor which will be great with soups or pasta. I was expecting some mild heat from the red chile powder but it contributed a good amount of smokiness instead of heat which is appreciated.

Thoughts for next time:

These amounts of spices and peppers seem to be spot on for this style of bread. If I made this again, I’d probably add some cubed cheddar or smoked Gouda for an extra punch of flavor.

My Baking Notes

• Ambient temperature: 72’F
• Started autolyse @ 5:30pm
• Water temp: 92’F
• Dough was 88’F at autolyse
• Mixed @ 6:05pm
• Dough was 82’F after mixing
• 3 stretch and folds in first 90 minutes, w/ overnight bulk fermentation at room temp (68’F)
• Started proof & oven preheat @ 6:55am the next morning
• Into oven @ 7:50am