Rainy Saturday afternoon – Chilli and Cheese Sourdough Baps

You all know the feeling on a Saturday afternoon when it’s horrible, wet, grey and cold outside. I was fortunate to have my lovely sister Vered from eat now talk later staying with me. This of course meant it was acceptable to stay in, make a nice dinner and watch a film. We started brainstorming ideas of what to have for dinner, something yummy and makes you feel warm but not too heavy. We had a few boiled eggs in the fridge to make into egg mayo, we had humous and various other dips. So we decided on bread rolls. I got a piece of paper and calculated a recipe adding in  hot dried chilli and chunks of cheese. I have both a white and rye sour at home, since learning about and researching sourdoughs  I really like the combination of a rye sour with white flour, so that’s we decided on. 

Recipe
327g Strong white bread flour
186g Water
55g Rye sour
7g Yeast
7g Olive oil
6g Salt
2g Sugar
4g Dried chilli (flakes are best)
20g strong hard cheese cut into chunks
Makes 4 large baps at 160g each or 5 at 130g

As it was already afternoon and we wanted the baps for dinner I decided to add yeast as well as the sour to quicken the fermentation time without compromising on taste.

Method
Mix all the ingredients together till a dough is formed. I always use my kitchenaid with a dough hook on speed one for about 10 mins. If you are kneading by hand, once the ingredients are combined stretch and knead the dough for approximately 20 minutes until a soft dough is formed. Then place it in a lightly oiled bowl  to ferment for 2 hours, cover with cling film. After an hour and 20 minutes you need to knock back the dough. This is done to get rid of excess air bubbles. Push the dough a few times with your knuckles (like a light kneading) until it looks at it did before fermentation, cover and leave for the remaining 40 minutes.

 Remove the dough from the bowl and scale into the size required. Lightly mould into balls and leave covered for ten minutes. This allows the dough to rest and be more manageable when shaping.

Giving the dough an intermediate prove

After a ten minute rest re-shape the dough, I chose to make mine round baps. Place on a baking tray making sure the dough has enough space to rise and leave covered in a warm place to prove for 35 minutes. After proving top with extra cheese (if you really like it hot you could add chilli powder or pepper to season the cheese) and add to the top of the baps.

Ready for the oven

 Bake in a pre heated oven at 210’c for 15-20 minutes( if using a fan oven lower the temperature to 200’c). If you’re unsure as to whether it’s fully baked tap the bottom of the bread, if it sounds hollow it’s fully baked, if not it needs a bit longer in the oven.

The dough structure

They tasted really good and went very well with all the dips and salad! I am very happy with the way these turned out, especially as I made the recipe up on the spot. It gave me a real boost of confidence in myself, a great feeling! The combination of rye sour and white flour worked well and the dough structure was lovely.

Enjoy 🙂