Sourdough Cheese and Onion Bread

This bread combines Larry's idea for kneading the cheese into the flour with my own practice of showering the top with parmigiano and then topping it with caramelized onion, which in turn came out of Silverton.

I mixed a dough of about 75% hydration using Central Milling flour. 100% starter made up about 20% of the formula by baker's percentage. I wanted a soft, white crumb, so I added some olive oil and some milk. I kneaded about a cup of finely grated cheddar into about 18 ounces of flour. This gave a very mild cheese flavor to the crumb. Twice as much cheese, or a more strongly flavored one would give more flavor.

Given the schedule this week, I fermented the dough in bulk overnight after folding it pretty aggressively in the first hour. This yielded a dough in the morning that was both wet and taught. 

I flattened out the dough and gave it two hours on the bench, which was about an hour less than it needed. This, with the milk and olive oil and cheese kneaded in, did no favors for the cell structure. I docked it all over with wet fingertips before loading. It baked at 450 degrees for about 20 minutes. I gave it another five minutes at 475 to darken it.

So, not a pizza, not a foccaccia, and not really a loaf of bread; sort of a bastard, but very well received by tasters. After all, everyone loves cheese and onions baked to brown and black.