Sourdough Bread With Blue Cheese and Walnuts

Sumptuous sourdough sandwich with pesto/mayo, tomato, avocado, and lettuce

If you've read much of my blog you will know that I'm fascinated by bread.  It has a long and storied history and was one of the earliest prepared foods.  God mentions it to Adam as He casts him out of the Garden of Eden saying "by the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat thy bread".  Anthropologists mention bread as one of the catalysts that enabled a transition from hunter-gatherer society to agrarian societies.  Agrarian societies set down roots, became stable, developed technology, arts, and social structures.

The earliest forms of bread were probably unleavened flat-breads (some sort of starch pounded to a pulp and heated on rocks).  However, it was the ancient Egyptians at Luxor who discovered that if they left their dough (made from pounded grains and water) out for a few days it began to puff up and when it was baked it was lighter and more edible than flat-breads.  That was the beginning of sourdough bread.  Yeast spores are ubiquitous so if you leave a flour and water paste out in the open it traps some of the spores floating by on the breeze and begins to ferment.  If you feed that starter with new starch those few spores quickly grow to millions and you get sourdough.  Sourdough bread was the fuel the Egyptians used to build the pyramids (our modern day building projects tend to be fueled by diesel, but they had to fuel human builders who did the work by hand).  They believed that the rising of their bread was a gift from the gods.

I have a wonderful sourdough starter that I keep in my refrigerator and use over and over again (feed it with flour and water to make more then keep a portion as a starter for next time).  Sourdough is the simplest of breads.  It consists of flour, water, and salt.  Sourdough bread requires advance planning (e.g. you feed the starter the night before, and unlike commercial yeast breads it takes several hours to raise) but the results are so delicious that it's worth it!  I have made many types of sourdough but one of my more recent experiments turned out so good that I thought I'd share it with you all--Blue Cheese and Walnut--absolutely delicious!

Before you begin:

• Sourdough starter - Get some from a friend who makes sourdough, start it from scratch, or buy a starter.   I got my starter on e-Bay, though it takes several days to get it going before you can make bread--it's a bit of a pain but it's a great resource once you get a jar of starter in your fridge.

Preparing the starter:

• In a ceramic or glass bowl mix together one cup of white flour and one cup of water
• Add your starter and stir it all well (it separates in the fridge--the liquid part was called "hootch" and sometimes drunk by the old-time gold prospectors who kept their sourdough warm in a pouch strapped to their bodies and used it to make many different meals)
• Cover with plastic wrap and leave it on the counter to grow
• After about 6 hours the mixture should be bubbling and smell "sour"
• Add another cup of white flour and another cup of water and mix it all up, cover, and leave overnight
• Next morning stir the mixture, pour as much starter as you began with back into you refrigerator jar and put it in the fridge for next time

Making the Sourdough Bread:

• Remainder of the starter (see above)
• 2 cups of luke warm water
• 2 ounces of blue cheese
• 1 cup of chopped walnuts
• 1 heaping tablespoon of salt
• 5 cups of flour (if you use whole wheat flour include a third of a cup of vital wheat gluten) plus enough more to make the dough spring back when you poke it

Whisk the blue cheese into the water and mix with the sourdough starter.  Add the salt and walnuts and stir well.  Stir in the flour and mix into dough.  Mix in an additional half-cup of flour at a time until the dough springs back when you poke it.  Put it on the counter and knead it well.  Return it to the bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let it rise for two hours.  Pound it down and form the dough into loaves (I like to roll my dough out into rectangles and then roll it up into loaves which helps the bread raise up higher).  Proof (raise) it in a warmed oven (with the heat turned back off) until it is double in size which may take another couple of hours.  Bake it in a hot oven (400 degrees fahrenheit) for 25 minutes.  One trick for crunchy crust is to put a small oven-safe container of water in the bottom of the oven.  The steam that creates makes the crust crispy.

Be sure to eat some of this wonderful bread while it's warm.  Cool the rest to room temperature on a rack, put it in bags and freeze until you're ready to use it, then thaw it out, warm it, and enjoy it like it was fresh.