Za’atar & goats cheese mixed flour sourdough bread…

 I’ve been having fun with my sourdough starter again recently, as you will have seen from my previous post, and may have already seen on Instagram…? Well, this loaf was my biggest experiment yet… 

I’ve seen lots of wonderful looking filled or flavoured loaves of bread on others people’s blogs and have wanted to try out some ideas but wasn’t sure what effect the added ingredients would have on the dough. This week I had put together two different sourdough doughs so decided to risk one of them. 

The dough was a mixture of spelt flour, kamut/Khorason flour and a smaller amount of strong white flour, consequently the dough was quite sloppy and not the easiest to work with. When you use spelt flour, whether using 100% spelt or with a small percentage of other strong bread flours as I did here, the dough initially feels quite sturdy, but quickly loosens up as it proves, it is therefore often useful to bake the bread in a tin to help it keep a shape. I didn’t do that this time which is why when you bake the bread, the dough spreads before it rises during the bake, hence why the bread looks flatter than previous loaves, it made up for its looks in taste though 🙂  

So, I basically put the dough together based on the overnight recipe I’ve used many times before, using 200g spelt flour, 200g kamut flour & 100g strong white flour, 160g bubbly starter & 290g water. It developed and rose beautifully overnight and the next day I used a scraper to pour the dough onto a large tray sprinkled with flour and crumbled mild goats cheese over the top along with some za’atar mixed with olive oil.. 

I then had to use the scraper to loosely mix it through the dough, I didn’t work it too much, then left it to rise again whilst I heated the oven.. 

I heated the oven to 250C (fan) then poured – yes, poured, it was that sloppy! – the dough into my roasting pan, put the lid on, turned the oven down to 220C and baked it for 30 minutes with the lid on, and a further 12 minutes without it. The smell as it baked was AMAZING!!!!!!! OMG! spelt smells amazing as you bake it, so does kamut, put them together with the spices, and woohoo!!! heaven in your nose!  

  I ate it on its own yesterday, it didn’t need anything with it to be honest. By this morning the aroma of the za’atar filled the kitchen and it took all my will power to wait until lunch time to have some! 

I toasted a couple of slices and topped them with ricotta cheese and some cherry tomatoes and garlic that I had slow roasted yesterday.. 

  So good!! And check me out using my gorgeous new bowls from Sytch Farm Studios – I’ve been looking at them and loving them for three weeks now so finally decided to use them…I struggle to use new things! I like to cherish them in all their new beautiful glory for a while, I’m exactly the same with clothes!!

Anyway, I hope you feel inspired to chuck something new in your dough, next time I will add more goats cheese, as it got a bit lost. I hope my lovely friends at this week’s Fiesta Friday enjoy my loaf, do join us and our lovely co hosts this week, the fabulous Linda and Caroline. 

Have a great weekend!