Roasted Garlic Sourdough Bread

This easy sourdough bread recipe is a great simple recipe to follow. If you are new to baking bread with sourdough starter, you will love how straightforward this recipe is, and that is yields great results.

This bread recipes uses a lower hydration rate dough, which means you are using more flour than water. This means the dough will be firmer and easier to work with (which is great for beginners!), the bread is softer and denser, so there are less big airy holes, and the crust ends up being softer.

Flavored with plenty of roasted garlic and an optional bit of chopped rosemary, this sourdough loaf is flavorful, and so easy to eat!

Plus with this much garlic, no vampires will be anywhere near your house!

This bread is excellent for grilled cheese sandwiches, for using in a breakfast casserole, for dipping in an olive oil mixture, or eating in a sandwich! Enjoy!

Try these other delicious sourdough bread recipes:

• Rosemary Sourdough Bread
• Jalapeño Cheddar Sourdough Bread
• Chocolate Sourdough Bread
• Sourdough Beer Bread

How to make roasted garlic sourdough bread

This sourdough bread loaf is straight forward to make. For the full set of directions, please scroll down to the recipe card below.

Make the levain

1. In a small bowl, combine the ingredients for the levain until well incorporated.
2. Cover and ferment at room temperature 8 hours.

Roast the garlic

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and roast the garlic for 1 hour. Allow to cool.
2. Mash the garlic with a fork and mix it with olive oil to create a paste.

*Optional: You can mix in 1-2 Tablespoons of fresh chopped rosemary into the garlic puree if you would like! This is super delicious, but its also good without it. Up to you!

Make the dough

1. In a stand mixer with a dough hook, combine the levain, flour, salt, and most of the water, mixing on low speed to create a dough.
2. Increase the speed on the mixer and mix until you get a medium level of gluten development.
3. Add the rest of the water and the garlic puree mixture and mix.
4. The dough will be very soft at this stage, and it won’t look like it is coming together, but it should have both strength and elasticity.

Bulk Ferment with stretch and folds

1. Place in an oiled bowl and allow to ferment for 30 minutes.
2. Remove the plastic covering and stretch the dough out and fold it over itself (in 3’s, like a pamphlet). You want to grab the side furthest from you and stretch it up and out away from you, then fold it back over to the center of the dough. Turn the bowl of dough 90 degrees to the right. Grab the next portion of dough that is farthest away from you and repeat the stretch the fold. Do this two more times, rotating the bowl each time, until you have stretched and folded each “edge” of the dough.
3. Replace the plastic wrap and allow the dough to rest for another 30 minutes (or 1 hour total since the start of the bulk ferment), and then perform another set of stretch and folds.
4. Allow the dough to rest for another 30 minutes (it should not be at the 90 minute mark since bulk ferment starter). Replace the plastic wrap.
5. Allow the dough to continue bulk fermentation for another 2 hours 30 minutes, until the dough has almost doubled in size.

Shape the dough

1. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface.
2. Shape the piece into a loose ball and allow to rest for 20 minutes.
3. Smooth the dough into round, smooth ball and dust the loaf with flour and place it top side down, into a lined proofing basket. 
4. Proof for 4 hours, or until doubled in size.

Bake

1. Preheat the oven to 425 F.
2. Bake in a preheated oven for 10 minutes with steam and then 25 without steam. See below for information on what to bake in and how to create steam.

What should I bake my loaf in?

You have two good choices for baking, and both are good, it just depends on what tools you have on hand.

• Dutch Oven (affiliate link) – You can use a nice big cast iron pot with a lid to bake it. Make sure you preheat it and the lid so they are nice and hot. The lid will help trap in any steam and create a nice hot environment for oven spring. You can add in a few ice cubes around the bread (but not on it) if you want even more steam. The only downside to this is you have to carefully transfer your dough into the hot pan and carefully remove the hot lid to crisp the crust.
• Baking stone + baking dish – You can use a baking stone instead of a pot. You will need to pair this with another kind of high temperature safe baking dish (not glass) that you can pour boiling water in to create steam. Make sure you preheat both items to be really hot. The downside to this method is you have to work quickly to add boiling water to the pan below the baking stone, and then add the dough to the baking stone without losing too much heat from the oven and without burning yourself.

Baker’s Schedule

Knowing how this bread recipe fits into your schedule is an important step for knowing when you should start to have it be done on time. I like to work backwards from when I want the bread to be done baking and figure out when I should feed my starter.

• Levain – 8 hours rest time
• Roasting Garlic – 1 hour
• Mixing Dough – 20 minutes
• Stretch and Folds – 1 hour 30 minutes
• Bulk Fermentation – 2 hours 30 minutes
• Shaping – 20 minutes
• Final Proofing – 4 hours (can also do your final proof overnight in the fridge)
• Baking – 35 minutes

*NOTE: The timing of this schedule is dependent on the temperature of your house. Dough will proof faster in a warmer house, and slower in a colder house. Watch the dough here, not the clock! For reference, the temperature of my house is 70 F. 

What kind of sourdough starter do I need for this recipe?

This recipe uses a 100% hydration sourdough starter – meaning one that has been fed equal amounts of flour and water. For more reading on what that means, check out Feeding your sourdough starter.

This recipe needs a fed and active starter – so a starter that is nice and bubbly and has at least doubled in size. 

New to sourdough? Read my Ultimate Guide to Sourdough for Beginners to answer all the questions you have!

How to serve this to your family

What can you use jalapeno cheddar bread for?

• Use it to create awesome sandwiches
• Serve it beside a nice bowl of soup
• Turn it into grilled cheese sandwiches
• Make an awesome breakfast strata with it
• Serve it beside homemade chili.
• Serve it beside breakfast with eggs!

How to store sourdough bread

This bread stores best at room temperature in a bread bag, or wrapped in a kitchen towel. You can also store the bread, sliced side down, on a wooden cutting board. Do not store in the fridge, the bread will become hard.