Sourdough versatility

Last week I ended up needing to make a few loaves of bread last minute, and my sourdough wasn't recently fed up.  My go to recipe in that situation is my Un-Fed Sourdough Starter French bread.  For one of the loaves, that was the perfect recipe, but for the other two, I wanted something a little more sandwich friendly.  Well, I should say with a little more refined and enriched crumb, since the original recipe would make fine sandwiches!  My starter perks up so fast that these loaves might have worked just fine without spiking with yeast, but in the interest of time and for assurance of success since they were to be shared, I went with a modified un-fed recipe.  It turned out beautifully.  And so easy to do as well.  I simply added two enrichments: some milk powder, whole goat milk powder in my case, and some butter.  Oil would do just as well.

I made a double batch, but for each batch I added (approximately):

1 tbsp butter (~14g)

½ scoop of milk powder (~15g) (~1½ tbsp)

These were eyeball measurements, it really isn't super important to be exact.  Just add them in with everything else.  I also used brown sugar for extra flavor, a spoonful of honey would have worked as well.  These were all baked as the part whole grain version, using about 100g fresh ground flour and 200g all purpose, using an 8x4" loaf pan with the dough allowed to rise until about 1" over the edge and slashed straight down the middle lengthwise.  I just love the ease and versatility of this recipe, giving me three beautiful loaves, including some gorgeous ears on my plain unfed sourdough!  Oh, and on that note: when using a curved lame to do the slashing, make sure to use it with the curve facing up!  That helps give a shallow angle on the slashing, which contributes to the lifting up of that "ear" on the loaf.

Bread just want to be bread!  Don't be afraid to experiment with recipes you love, to give you new options and variations!