I needed to use up some sourdough starter so I was perusing the Sourdough Companion website again. I saw one person talking about making a blue cheese and walnut loaf and another person talking about doing celery and romano and I figured I could take some elements of each of those and try a celery and blue cheese loaf.

I pretty much just built a basic sourdough based on bakers' percentages and worked some inclusions into it. I figured 800g of flour would be a pretty good starting point and rolled with 65% (520g) water, 20% (160g) starter, and 2% (16g) salt. I think I might try for a slightly higher hydration dough next time, but other than that it was great! Although I need to either find a better method of working the inclusions in or make them as pan loaves next time, because they ended up coming apart a bit during baking. Flavour was real good though!

Celery and Blue Cheese Sourdough

Ingredients

• 800g hard (strong/bread/high grade) whole wheat flour
• 550g water
• 16g coarse sea salt
• 160g active/fed starter (100% hydration)
• 4 ribs celery, chopped
• 2 Tbsp. bacon grease or butter
• 100g blue cheese, crumbled

Directions

1. Mix the water into the flour to form a dough. Cover and set aside for at least an hour and as long as overnight.
2. Add the salt and knead a few strokes to work it into the dough.
3. Add the starter and knead it into the dough. This will be a little messy at first!
4. Cover and ferment at room temperature, stretching and folding every hour or two until dough is light and active.
5. Meanwhile, melt the fat over medium heat and add the celery. Cook until softened.
6. Press the dough flat and sprinkle half the cheese and half the celery over the surface. Letter fold, press flat again, and sprinkle over the remaining cheese and celery before doing a second letter fold on the opposite axis.
7. Cover and rest for 30 minutes.
8. Press flat and divide into two equal portions.
9. Round each portion, cover, and rest for 30 minutes.
10. Shape each portion into a loaf and place, seam-side-up in a floured banneton to rise.
11. Cover and proof at room temperature until well-risen.
12. Preheat oven to 250°C (475°F), grease a baking sheet, and sprinkle it with cornmeal.
13. Turn the risen loaves out onto the prepared baking sheet and shalsh as desired.
14. Once the oven is preheated, pour some water into a pan and place it on the bottom rack of the oven.
15. Bake the bread at 250°C (475°F) on the middle rack of the oven for ~15 minutes.
16. Reduce heat to 160°C (325°F), remove the pan of boiling water, and bake for another 20 minutes.
17. Turn off oven and allow bread to rest in oven for 10 minutes.
18. Remove from oven and transfer to wire rack to cool.