Roasted Tomato Sourdough Bread!
Sourdough bread is SUPER popular right now! Instead of adding yeast to your dough, you use a sourdough starter which absorbs natural yeast from your environment to give rise to your dough, along with LOTS of tangy flavour! This bread is made with roasted tomatoes, but you can also take that out and just use water if you want a plain flavoured loaf. The process of this bread takes about 1 day, but there isn’t any kneading or mixers involved, just a little tending every few hours. The long wait is what helps build lots of delicious flavour into your loaf.
Crispy Crust full of Tomato Flavour!
Roasted Tomato Sourdough Bread
Yield: 1 loaf
Preheat oven to 375*F to bake tomatoes
Preheat oven to 450*F WITH a cast iron pot with it’s lid inside to heat up as well for baking bread
Tomato puree (you can skip this step and use 2 Tablespoons of tomato Paste if you like!)
1-1 1/2 cups Tomatoes cut into a few large chunks - I just used up any random chunks of tomato or wrinkly tomatoes that were in my fridge
3 cloves of Garlic
1 teaspoon Olive oil
Salt and Pepper
Bread:
1 1/3 cup room temperature water mixed with Tomato puree from above
1/2 cup Sourdough Starter (about 100 grams) - should be nice a bubbly and when you place it in a glass of water, it should float to the top, that means it’s ready to go!
1 teaspoon Dried Basil
2 1/3 cup Flour
1 1/2 teaspoons Salt
For the tomato puree, toss together all the ingredients - tomatoes, garlic, olive oil and salt and pepper in an oven safe pan, and bake for about 30 minutes or until the tomatoes start to roast and break down.
Let tomatoes cool, then puree in a food processor or blender until smooth.
To make dough, place your tomato puree into your measuring cup, then add your water until you get 1 1/3 cup liquid total. We need 1 1/3 cup liquid total, so it doesn’t matter how much tomato puree you end up with as long as the total of tomatoes and water equals 1 1/3 cup.
In a large bowl with a lid, combine your tomato/water liquid, the sourdough starter, dried basil and flour. Stir until there are no bits of dry flour peaking out.
Cover the bowl with a lid and let sit at room temperature for 1 hour.
At this point sprinkle your salt on top and lightly press it into the dough but poking your fingers into the dough all over the top.
Now we are going to do 4 folds.Grab one side of the dough, lift and fold it on top of itself, then turn the bowl 90 degrees and repeat until you get back to where you started and have done 4 folds.
Cover the bowl and let sit at room temperature for 30 minutes.
Repeat step 7 and 8 until you have done the 4 fold FIVE TIMES! This will take 2.5 hours. I put a sticky note on top of my bowl and mark each time I do the folds so I don’t loose track.
Once all your folds are finished, put the lid on and let your dough sit at room temperature for about 1 hour, then place into the fridge overnight or about 12 hours.
After the dough has rested, take it out of the fridge and let it sit for about 2 hours at room temperature.
Plop your dough out onto a floured surface and lightly press it into a rough rectangle shape.
Fold the dough into thirds, like you are folding a letter (Take the base third and fold it over, then fold that over on top of itself).
Now turn the log of dough and take the narrowest end and roll it up into a chubby little bundle.
Now pinch together all the seams so they can’t come apart.
Grab a bowl or basket (or if you have one, a banneton) and line it with a super well floured clean tea towel.
Place your dough ball seam side UP into the tea towel lined bowl, then flip any overhanging towel edges on top of the loaf to cover it.
Place your loaf into the fridge to chill for 3-4 hours (this will help build a little extra flavour), or 1 hour at room temperature.
Heat up your oven to 450*F with a cast iron pot with a lid inside of it, so your pot gets really hot as well. Grab a piece of parchment paper that will fit into the bottom of your pot.
Once your bread is ready to go, flip the bread out of the bowl onto your piece of parchment that fits into the pot and peel off the tea towel. Sprinkle the top of the bread with a little extra flour (this will help your scoring design POP!)
Using a sharp knife or clean exacto blade make a long slice across the top of your bread, just cutting through the top “crust” of the bread, not going too deep into the loaf, this is called scoring and it’s going to allow your bread to expand without cracking. You can also score pretty patterns onto your dough, google has lots of inspiration, leaf shapes, wheat designs, so many ideas! Bakeries score different designs on each bread so they can tell what flavour each loaf is!
Grab your super hot pot out of the oven and place your dough into the pot by lifting it up with the parchment paper.
Toss 1 ice cube into the pot under the parchment paper and quickly place the lid on top, this is going to give it a little extra steam and help make a nice crust!
Immediately place your pot back into the hot oven and bake for 45 minutes.
Remove the lid of your pot and continue baking for about 10 more minutes, or until golden brown and sounds hollow when you tap it.
Remove from pot and place on a wire rack to cool!
Eat!