Beer & Onion Sourdough

So, I made a big pot of caramelized onions the other day, and wanted to try various recipes. I was also inspired by a discussion we had about using beer in sourdough. So that serendipity of events led to a bake of Hamelman's Beer bread with added caramelized onions!

This is a nice sourdough (or rather, a hybrid) that uses a liquid bread flour levain, a stiff rye sour and a bit of dry yeast (so you can make and bake on the same day). The beer is used as part of the main dough water. Hamelman uses a dark ale, but I used my hubby's homemade stout. It's a lovely dough - smooth, stretchy and strong. I added the onions (100 grams to the recipe which makes around 1800 grams of dough) during a last couple of stretch and folds (the dough is made in a mixer, including the first 'stretch & folds' done by running the mixer for a few seconds every 20 minutes).

After about a 2 hour bulk ferment I scaled the dough into three smallish loaves of just under 600 grams each, and put them into bannetons to proof. I needed to go out for a bit, so I popped them into plastic bags and into the fridge. When I got to them about three hours later they were quite well-proofed, probably about at peak. They did hold their shape fairly well on the peels and after slashing.

There wasn't a lot of oven spring, as I don't think there was much 'push' left in the dough, but it still expanded a bit in the oven and held it's shape well.

I had some toasted for lunch today, and we had some with our pea soup for dinner tonight. Lovely bread - good flavour, moist chewy crumb, nice crust. The onions basically melted into the dough, but the aroma and flavour were there. I will definitely make it again!