Sourdough Made With Eggs and Yoghurt

I’m not sure what this is called. I tried to look it up – I’m sure there must be some traditional bread on this kind of recipe – it’s such an obvious Spring excesses recipe. I think Bulgarian Kolach uses these ideas but in a neater way!

What I have is a unbleached sourdough enriched with eggs and yoghurt, baked free form with poppy seeds on top. It’s crusty, rustic, moist and dense and toasts magnificently.  My everyday bread is much heavier wholegrain, but this made a wonderful Father’s Day breakfast under Lemony Mushrooms and Spinach with 2 Minute Hollandaise.

The Recipe:

Step One:

Feed the sourdough starter. Pour a cup or so of sourdough starter into a bowl.

Mix 1½ cups of water and 1½ cups of bakers flour.  Pour half of it back into the starter culture to top it up.  Add the other half to the starter in the bowl.

Put the starter back in the fridge. Cover the bowl with a clean cloth and leave out on the kitchen bench till it is nice and frothy. This can take anything from a couple of hours to most of a day depending on how vigorous your starter is, how recently you last fed it, how warm the day is, how much chlorine is in your water, how it feels on the day.

Step Two:

Then add:

• a good teaspoon of salt
• 2 big dessertspoons of Greek yoghurt
• 2 beaten eggs
• 1½ cups of baker’s flour

Tip more baker’s flour on the benchtop, and knead for just a few minutes to get a smooth, not sticky dough.

Put a swig of oil in a bowl, and swish the dough around in it to cover. I use macadamia oil for this, but any mild tasting oil will do, or even melted butter. Leave it to prove in a warmish spot until it is big and soft and has that distinctive sourdough texture (about doubled in size is a rule of thumb).

Step Three:

Sprinkle flour on the bench top, tip the dough ball out onto it and knead just a minute or two to knock it down, adding flour as you need to to stop it becoming sticky (but if you make it too dry the poppy seeds won’t stick). Sprinkle a good dessertspoon of poppy seeds on the bench top and roll the dough ball in them till they are well stuck.

I just put the dough ball, seedy side up, on a pizza tray.  Because I didn’t slash the top, it developed the moonscape texture, but I quite like that. I brushed the top with a bit of milk to glaze.

Leave, covered, in a warmish place for another hour or two, until it is well risen, then put in a cold oven set to medium (180°C or thereabouts).

Bake for around 50 minutes till the crust is golden and it sounds hollow when knocked.