I'm trying to get smart about this sourdough thing and make two breads back to back when I refresh my barm. There is a three day window in which the barm is good after it is refreshed, and since some formulas take two or three days to make, they are pretty easy to stagger their starting day in that window so that they'll be baked a couple days apart.
This bread is made using a mixed leavening method, which means that it is leavened with wild yeast in the sourdough barm and spiked with commercial yeast as well. On the first day of the three day process, I added flour and water to some of my sourdough barm to make a sponge, which fermented on the counter all day and then sat in the fridge overnight. I also chopped and oven roasted an onion, which made my house smell fabulous. The next day I started by chopping up some fresh chives and scallions. Now, J4 and I both grew up calling scallions "green onions", and I must confess that we inadvertently both did google searches to make sure that they were indeed one and the same. He was at work, I was at home, we had a phone conversation afterwards, it was a little ridiculous. But now that we know they are the same, we are henceforth calling them "scallions," which we believe to be the snobbier of the two terms. Anyway, I mixed my dough with gobs of lovely, fresh, fragrant green in it, and it was so pretty that I took a picture.
That dough also contains a cup and a half of asiago cheese, but it is far less noticeable. I kneaded the dough, let it rise, shaped two large rounds, and put them on a baking sheet in the refrigerator overnight. In the morning they were pretty huge and touching. I proofed them at room temperature for two hours and they were even more huge and touching. Then came the fun part. Following PR's instructions, I brushed the loaves with olive oil and then pressed my fingertips into the dough, making deep dimples all over its surface. I sprinkled another cup and a half of cheese over the loaves, and then topped them with the roasted onions. These were baked hearth style for 40 minutes, during which time they had sizable oven spring which left them even more huge and touching. About halfway through baking I separated them and they were fine. These came out of the oven with a whopping 11inch diameter. They looked like thick, pillowy pizzas.
This bread was yummy, but it wasn't what we expected. J4's comment? "I thought this would be cheese bread with onions in it, but it's onion bread with cheese in it." And that sums it up. We enjoyed it (and are still enjoying it), and it was fun to make. I'm guessing I probably won't make it again, but if I do, I think I will top the bread with the roasted onions first and then the cheese so that the onions don't get quite so done.
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