I was visiting a bakery in Albuquerque and saw they had a pine nut, pecorino and black pepper sourdough for sale. Unfortunately I got there too late and they had sold out, but there was something about that flavor combo that sounded intriguing. I wanted to try a modified version of my own so came up with this recipe. For this batch, I dropped the pine nuts and used Parmesan cheese since that’s what I already had in my fridge.
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:
This recipe makes two loaves. Simply divide all the ingredients by two if you only want one loaf.
Dough:
- 860g King Arthur bread flour
- 140g whole wheat flour
- 750g filtered water @ 85’F
- 200g unfed starter straight from fridge (100% hydration)
- 18g sea salt (reduced from my normal 22g due to Parmesan being pretty salty)
- 40g grated Parmesan cheese
- 10g freshly cracked black pepper
Method:
I started by mixing the flours, salt, black pepper and grated Parmesan. I set that aside and measured out 750g water which I heated up to 92 degrees. To this water, I added my cold starter and mixed it all together. Finally, I poured the water/starter mixture into the dry ingredients and used my hands to mix it all together and perform a few stretch and folds.
In total, I performed 4 stretch and folds separated by 20 minutes. You can see from the photos above how the dough starts out extremely loose and shaggy but by the time the fourth fold is performed, it holds its shape very well.
After about 8 hours, I divided and shaped the loaves and let them sit on the counter for a 10 minute bench rest. Finally, I put them in bannetons that I liberally dusted with rice flour. I put the bannetons in vegetable bags and then placed them in the fridge for a roughly 16 hour cold proof.
One hour before baking I started preheating the oven, with dutch ovens inside, to 450’F. When it was time to bake, I took the loaves straight from the fridge and placed them in the preheated dutch ovens, gave them a quick score and then put them in the oven.
I baked the loaves at 450’F for 20 minutes covered, then removed the lid of the dutch ovens and baked for an additional 30 minutes.
Result:
Without having any reference to the amount of black pepper or grated cheese, I think these loaves turned out well. The black pepper lends a great spice flavor and smells amazing when baking and heating up for toast. The grated cheese is extremely subtle and gets overpowered by the black pepper. I also may have fermented them a little longer than I should have, as the crust is a little cracked and the crumb structure is slightly uneven.
Those few things aside, these loaves still taste great and make an amazing bread for breakfast sandwiches. I’ve also used this with normal toast with jam and peanut butter and the pepper lends some complexity to it without being overpowering.
Changes for next time?
I think the amount of cracked black pepper is spot on (10g for two loaves) but next time I’ll use actual Pecorino cheese and probably double the amount from 40 to 80 grams. I’ll also reduce the bulk fermentation time slightly in the hopes that the structure of the finished loaves are a little better.
My Baking Notes
- Ambient Temperature @ mixing: 67’F
- Mixed @ 12:00pm on January 4th
- Dough was 78’F at mixing
- 4 stretch and folds in first 1.5 hours
- Started proof @ 8:15pm on January 4th
- Preheated oven @ 11:25am on January 5th
- Out of fridge and into oven @ 12:25pm on January 5th
Alegre Bread 