Roasted Peppers and Parmesan Sourdough Bread

What a winning combination: roasted peppers and Parmesan cheese in a sourdough bread!
For this recipe, I divided the dough into 2 parts, one part was plain, the second one I infused with roasted pepper pure and sprinkled some parmesan cheese during lamination.

What’s the point of dividing the dough into 2 parts – you probably ask. The answer is simple – plain dough makes a carcass to hold more hydrated roasted pepper dough.
Ready? Let’s dive into it.

Ingredients

Sourdough Starter 

• 5g sourdough starter
• 35g water
• 30g all purpose flour or bread flour
• 5g rye flour 

Dough

• 270g  high gluten flour (90%)
• 30g whole grain whole wheat flour (10%)
• 218g water (73%)
• 60g levain (20%) 
• 6g salt (2%)

After the dough is divided in two pieces:

• 60g pure from roasted red peppers  for the dough #2
• 40g shredded Parmesan cheese 

Directions 

Starter

Night before

• 10 pm add starter to the water and whisk together, add flour, mix well, cover loosely, let it sit at room temperature at 74-78F until in about 10-12 hours starter reaches its peak (triples or more in volume).
• Roast baby red bell peppers , let them cool overnight.
• Learn how to make starter from scratch here.

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Next morning

• 7 am mix water with bread flour and cover it, let it rest 1 hour for autolyse. During the autolyse process the flour absorbs water, becoming fully hydrated. This activates gluten development.
• 8 am add sourdough starter. 
• Mix on low speed of your mixing machine for 2-3 min, or KitchenAid on speed 3 for 3-4 minutes until well incorporated.
• Cover and let it rest for 30 min.
• 8:30 am add salt and mix on low speed of your mixing machine for 1-2 minutes, or KitchenAid on speed 3 for 2-3 minutes until well incorporated. 
• Divide the dough in 2 equal pieces.
• Add puréed roasted red peppers to the dough #2 by mixing it, until pepper pure is well incorporated.
• The dough #2  should come up together, but still be sticky. We will continue gluten development and structure building by performing stretches and folds during warm fermentation period. Cover both dough pieces.
• Leave to rest for 30 min. At 74-78F /23-26C.
• 9 am wet your hands and spray table with water. Stretch(laminate) the first and second dough pieces separately, then place one on top of another.
• Sprinkle Parmesan cheese on top of the stretched dough, then fold the dough and let rest 30 min.

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• 9:30 am 1st stretch and fold
• 10:15 am 2nd stretch and fold.
• 11:00 am 3rd stretch and fold. 
• Performing stretches and folds every 45 min will help to continue gluten development.
• Keep monitoring the dough, if it’s rising too fast, you can shorten time in between stretches to 40 minutes or less.
• After the final stretch let the dough proof for 40 minutes at 76-80F/ 23-26C. You should see some bubbles on the surface, the dough has to become lighter. We are looking for 40%-50% rise.

• 11:40 am transfer dough to a work surface and dust the top with flour. Then flip the dough over so the floured side faces down.
• Fold the dough onto itself so the flour on the surface remains entirely on the outside of the loaf. This will become the crust.
• Place the dough round on a work surface and let it rest for 30 minutes uncovered.
• 12:10 pm dust the dough with flour. Use a dough scraper to flip it over onto a work surface so floured sides are facing down.
• Starting at the side closest to you, pull the right 2 corners of the dough to the left, then fold them up into half of the dough. Repeat this action on the left side too.
• Finally, roll the dough. Shape it into a smooth, taut roll.
• Transfer the roll, seam side up into a prepared proofing basket (loaf pan with kitchen towel)
• Cover it with plastic and return the dough to the 80F (27C) environment for 15 min.

• 12:25 pm transfer dough to rise for 14-24 hours in the refrigerator.
• Preheat the oven to 500 F, place your cast iron pan with the lid inside for 45 minutes -1 hour.
• Remove the dough from the fridge.
• Flip it over on a parchment paper, score it with a sharp knife or a bread lame.
• Transfer it to the hot cast iron pan, cover it with the lid (to create steam for a beautiful and crusty crumb).
• Bake at 500F for 15 minutes with the lid on.
• Remove the lid, lower the temperature to 450F.
• Bake for 20 more minutes until golden brown.

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Enjoy 😉