Roasted Garlic Sourdough Bread Recipe
Roasted garlic sourdough bread is both healthy and delicious. It’s simple once you get the hang of it. If you don’t have a mature sourdough starter yet, read this post for the tutorial.
Related: Make a sourdough starter from scratch
Related: how to fix dense sourdough bread
This post contains affiliate links, which means I make a small commission at no extra cost to you. See my full disclosure here.
- roasted garlic sourdough bread video
- equipment for roasted garlic sourdough bread
- how to make roasted garlic sourdough bread
- roasted garlic sourdough Process
- Roasted garlic sourdough baking timeline
- roasted garlic sourdough tips
- is my starter ready to make bread?
- when should I add mix-ins into my sourdough bread
- sourdough bread Flavor combinations
- more sourdough recipes
- Shop this post
- Shop my Six Month Meal Plans
- homemade sourdough bread faqs
- pin it for later – roasted garlic sourdough
- print the roasted garlic sourdough recipe
- Roasted Garlic Sourdough Bread
- About Me
roasted garlic sourdough bread video
equipment for roasted garlic sourdough bread
- Large bowl (seriously – really large. My biggest pyrex bowl isn’t big enough, so I use a huge ceramic bowl I got at an antique shop).
- Water filter (we use our Berkey)
- Kitchen scale
- Proofing baskets or banneton baskets
- Dutch oven
- Razor or lame (you could also use a sharp kitchen knife but you won’t get as good a result for scoring)
- Parchment paper
- Tea towel
- Dough scraper
- Grain mill (optional – only if you want to mill your own flour)
how to make roasted garlic sourdough bread
Ingredients
All Purpose Einkorn flour: 700 g
Bread Flour: 250 g
Warm water: 550 g (if you aren’t using einkorn flour increase this to 650 g)
Sourdough starter: 200 g (mature and active)
Salt: 20 g
Peeled garlic: 100 g
Olive oil: drizzle
roasted garlic sourdough Process
Prepping dough
- Feed your sourdough starter as your normally would – do this several hours before you want to start making your dough. Make sure it is active and has doubled prior to moving to the next step.
- Combine your flours and warm water in a very large bowl and let this rest for one hour. This is called autolyse and it hydrates the flour and starts the gluten formation process so you don’t have to knead the dough.
- Add your sourdough starter and then mix with your hands to combine. No need to knead! Just make sure the starter is fully combined. Use a wet hand to limit sticking. Cover with a damp tea towel and rest for 15 minutes.
- Add your salt, mixing with wet hands just until incorporated. Let rest for 15 minutes.
Stretch and folds
- Perform about 4 stretch and folds. This helps to develop the gluten in your dough. The amount you do depends on your dough. At each stretch and fold, gauge how the dough is doing and whether or not you should do another round. If your dough is very elastic and relaxed, do another. If it’s tough and hard to pull, you’re good. I find about 4 rounds is necessary.
- Using wet hands, grab the dough starting at the edge farthest from you and pull it up and fold it over itself (closest to your body).
- Rotate the bowl 180 degrees and do the same thing on this side.
- Rotate bowl 90 degrees and do the same thing.
- Rotate the bowl 180 degrees and stretch and fold again.
Bulk fermentation
- After your stretch and folds, leave the damp towel over the bowl of dough and let it sit in a warm spot for many hours. The timing varies on your dough and environment. There will be a couple defining factors for when the dough has finished the bulk ferement:
- The dough will have doubled in size
- There may be bubbles that have formed on the surface of the dough
- The dough has relaxed and spread across the bowl (vs. looking bunched in a ball in the center of the bowl).
Shaping roasted garlic sourdough bread
- Use a dough scraper to carefully scrape the dough out of your bowl and onto a lightly floured surface.
- Use a dough scraper to cut the dough down the center (this recipe makes 2 loaves).
- Shape into 2 balls
- Let the dough rest for about 30 minutes.
- Turn the dough over, use floured hands if needed to shape. Bring one side of the dough towards the other (left to right) then do the same (right to left) then do top and bottom and bottom to top so all the corners meet in the middle.
- Shape the other ball of dough.
- Place shaped dough in your lightly floured banneton basket (seam side up), cover with plastic wrap and put in the fridge overnight (at a minimum 6 hours).
Baking roasted garlic sourdough bread
- Preheat a dutch oven in the oven at 500 degrees for at least 30 minutes.
- Right before you want to bake, remove one basket of dough from the fridge.
- Flip the dough over onto lightly floured parchment paper (so now the bottom is the top)
- Lightly dust the top with flour.
- Use a razor to score your dough.
- Hold lame or razor at 30-degree angle to the dough surface and cut about 1/2 inch deep into the dough using swift, confident motions.
- Use two hands to lift your parchment paper that the dough rests on, and put it in your preheated dutch oven.
- Bake with the dutch oven lid on at 500 degrees for 20 minutes.
- Drop the heat to 475 degrees and bake with dutch oven lid off for 20 minutes (or until a nice brown crust has formed overtop).
- Remove from oven and let it rest for an hour (this is the worst part, I know!).
- Repeat with second loaf.
Roasted garlic sourdough baking timeline
The total time needed is roughly 25-29 hours from the time you feed your sourdough starter to the time you can break bread. A lot of environmental factors go into this though – if your house is very warm, you could shave some time on the bulk ferment phase below.
Time needed: 1 day and 5 hours
Roasted Garlic Sourdough Baking Timeline
- 7 am – feed starter
Feed your sourdough starter.
- 11 am – autolyse
Do the float test to see if your starter is mature. If so, start the autolyse process. Just mix the flours and water and let this rest for 1 hour.
- 12:00 pm – combine ingredients
Add sourdough starter into your flour/water mixture and mix with your hands until well combined. No need to knead – just mix until combined. Cover with a damp tea towel and let rest for 15 minutes.
- Add your salt, mixing with wet hands just until incorporated. Let rest for 15 minutes.
- 12:30 pm – Stretch and fold
Add roasted garlic and begin 1st stretch and fold.
Stretch and fold a total of 4 times spaced about 30 minutes apart. Below is an example of what that could look like if you were perfectly on time. It doesn’t have to be exact though when life gets in the way!
1:00 – 2nd stretch and fold
1:30 – 3rd stretch and fold
2:00 – 4th stretch and fold
Cover with a damp tea towel and allow the dough to bulk ferment until doubled.
- 7:30pm – Shaping
The bulk ferment timing depends on environmental factors – just make sure it has doubled in size.
Split the dough in half down the middle with a dough scraper. Shape the dough and let sit for about 30 minutes.
- 8:00pm – Ferment in fridge
Place both dough balls into tea towel-lined and floured baskets (or banneton baskets), cover with plastic wrap, and keep fridge for 12-14 hours.
- Day 2 – 9:00 am – Preheat and scoring
Preheat dutch oven in a 500-degree oven for 30 minutes. Right before you’re ready to bake the bread, remove one basket from the fridge, dust the dough with flour, and score.
- 10:00am – Bake
Bake the sourdough bread at 500 degrees for 20 minutes with the dutch oven lid on.
- 10:20am – Bake
Drop the oven heat to 475 degrees, remove the dutch oven lid and bake for an additional 20 minutes.
- 10:40am – Rest/bake 2nd loaf
Allow your bread to cool for at least an hour. Repeat this and the previous day 2 steps for the second loaf.
- 12:00 pm – Break bread
Enjoy this bread for lunch or dinner, if there’s some leftover you can also enjoy it for breakfast the next day!
While this is resting, roast your garlic and set it aside to cool until stretch and folds.
Related: How to Store Sourdough Bread
roasted garlic sourdough tips
These notes are important and can make or break your bread (excuse the pun).
- Grams vs. Cups – it’s best to weigh the ingredients for sourdough bread. My recipe doesn’t even suggest cups measurements because everyone’s starter, flour and salt weight different amounts. So 1 cup of your starter could weigh something totally different than 1 cup of my starter. Sourdough bread is fickle and needs precise grams of each ingredient.
- Let your baked bread rest – I know you wont like me for this, but you really do need to let your bread rest for an hour after taking out of the oven. It continues cooking below that delicious looking crust.
- Scoring – there is a purpose to scoring! It directs the flow of what’s called “rapid expansion” and without scoring, your bread could rapidly expand in areas where you don’t want it to. Basically scoring is a control mechanism for where the bread will expand.
- Stretch and folds – you know those gorgeous holes in sourdough bread? This is what creates those! You definitely do not want to skip this step.
- Gap between adding salt and starter – make sure you have at least a 15 minute gap between adding your sourdough starter and salt to the dough. The salt can kill your wild yeast if not.
is my starter ready to make bread?
You can find out if your sourdough starter is ready to make a loaf of bread by doing the float test.
All you do for the sourdough starter float test is take a small dollop of your starter after it’s been fed within the last couple of hours, drop it into a glass of water, and if it floats you’ll probably get a good rise out of your sourdough bread. If it sinks, you’ll want to either wait for it to mature, or do some sourdough starter troubleshooting.
when should I add mix-ins into my sourdough bread
When I finally got creative with my sourdough bread making, I went out on a whim and just mixed in my other ingredients during the first stretch and fold. My thought process behind this was that I would still have several other stretch and folds after to get them fully incorporated. It worked! So I always mix the optional ingredients in at the first stretch and fold (whether it’s roasted garlic or anything else).
sourdough bread Flavor combinations
You may be wondering, what can I add to sourdough bread? Below are some single-ingredient options as well as sourdough bread flavor combinations to spark your creativity in the kitchen!
Single ingredient add ins
- Rosemary
- Cheese
- Jalapeños
- Dried fruit
- Olives
- Herbs
- Seeds/nuts
- Spices
- Garlic
- Any combination of the above that sounds delicious to you!
sourdough bread flavor combinations
- Rosemary garlic
- Cheddar Jalapeno
- Cinnamon raisin
- Garlic and olive oil
- Garlic parmesan
- Sage and caramelized onion
- Kalamata olives and dried herbs
- Sundried tomato and pesto
- the list is literally endless!
more sourdough recipes
Roasted Garlic Sourdough Bread
Pumpkin Sourdough Cinnamon Rolls
Sourdough Starter from Scratch
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- Berkey water filter (we use the Royal because we drink an insane amount of water!)
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- Dutch oven
- Stand mixer
- Boos Block Butcher Block
- 12 inch Cast Iron Skillet
- Kitchen scale
- Banneton baskets
- Dutch oven
- Lame
- Dough scraper
- Stainless baking sheet
- Silicone baking sheet mat
- Grain mill
Shop my Six Month Meal Plans
Shop for my six month meal plans here. These will help give you a restful dinner-time routine by giving you all your recipes laid out in a weekly meal plan format for 6 months.
homemade sourdough bread faqs
Sourdough is a form of natural yeast and is an alternative to using a packet of yeast for making bread. It’s a combination of water and flour fermented on the counter as it captures wild yeast from its environment.
The ideal dough temperature is 75-78 degrees. If your house isn’t that warm you can put it by a fireplace, wood stove, or outside if it’s warm.
There are usually 2 culprits for this: over-proofing and/or overhydration. Try proofing for less time if you think this may be the cause – take into consideration the heat in your house. If it is quite warm (above 74 degrees, then you may need to ferment for less time during the bulk ferment phase).
If you think overhydration is the cause of sticky dough, reduce the water content in your recipe by 5-10%. Keep in mind that different flours absorb water at different rates and your recipe may need to be adjusted.
Homemade sourdough bread is healthy because it’s more easily digestible by our bodies. The long fermentation process eliminates much of the antinutrient, phytic acid, which is found on grains. Phytic acid is the main culprit for why many people have a hard time digesting grains. By long fermenting grains, the vitamins and nutrients become more abundant and easily accessible to your body.
Sourdough bread tastes sour due to the fermentation process and the acids produced during the ferment. The longer the ferment, the sourer the bread.
pin it for later – roasted garlic sourdough
Related: How to Store Sourdough Bread
print the roasted garlic sourdough recipe
Roasted Garlic Sourdough Bread
Equipment
- Large bowl
- Water filter (or some way to get filtered water)
- Kitchen scale
- Proofing baskets or banneton baskets
- Dutch oven
- Razor, lame or knife
- Parchment paper
- Tea towel
- Dough scraper
Ingredients
- 700 grams All Purpose Einkorn flour you can use another kind of flour for this recipe, but you'll need to adjust the water content accordingly if so.
- 250 grams Bread flour you can omit this but make up for the grams with your other flour.
- 550 grams Warm water if you aren't using einkorn flour increase this to 650 g
- 200 grams Sourdough starter mature and active
- 20 grams Salt I use celtic sea salt for this recipe
- 100 grams Peeled garlic cloves
- Drizzle Olive oil
Instructions
Prepping Dough
- Feed your sourdough starter as your normally would – do this several hours before you want to start making your dough. Make sure it is active and has doubled prior to moving to the next step.
- Combine your flours and warm water in a very large bowl and let this rest for one hour. This is called autolyse and it hydrates the flour and starts the gluten formation process so you don't have to knead the dough.
- Add your sourdough starter and then mix with your hands to combine. No need to knead! Just make sure the ingredients are fully combined. Use a wet hand to limit sticking. Cover with a damp tea towel and rest for 15 minutes.
- Add your salt, mixing with wet hands just until incorporated. Let rest for 15 minutes.
- While this is resting, roast your garlic. Put peeled garlic on baking sheet with a drizzle of olive oil and roast at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes.
Stretch and Folds
- Add your roasted garlic right before you're about to perform the first stretch and fold.
- Perform about 4 stretch and folds. The first 2 should be spaced 15 min apart and the second two should be spaced about 30 minutes apart. You may need to do more depends on your dough. At each stretch and fold, gauge how the dough is doing and whether or not you should do another round. If your dough is very elastic and relaxed, do another. If it's tough and hard to pull, you're good. I find about 4 rounds is necessary.
- Using wet hands, grab the dough starting at the edge farthest from you and pull it up and fold it over itself (closest to your body).
- Rotate the bowl 180 degrees and do the same thing on this side.
- Rotate bowl 90 degrees and do the same thing.
- Rotate the bowl 180 degrees and stretch and fold again.
Bulk Fermentation
- After your stretch and folds, leave the damp towel over the bowl of dough and let it sit in a warm spot for many hours. The timing varies on your dough and environment. There will be a couple defining factors for when the dough has finished the bulk ferment: The dough will have doubled in size. There may be bubbles that have formed on the surface of the doughThe dough has relaxed and spread across the bowl (vs. looking bunched in a ball in the center of the bowl).
Shaping
- Use a dough scraper to carefully scrape the dough out of your bowl and onto a lightly floured surface.
- Use a dough scraper to cut the dough down the center (this recipe makes 2 loaves).
- Shape into 2 balls
- Let the dough rest for about 30 minutes.
- Turn the dough over, use floured hands if needed to shape. Bring one side of the dough towards the other (left to right) then do the same (right to left) then do top and bottom and bottom to top so all the corners meet in the middle.
- Shape the other ball of dough.
- Place shaped dough in your lightly floured banneton basket (seam side up), cover with plastic wrap and put in the fridge for 12-14 hours.
Bake Bread
- Preheat a dutch oven in the oven at 500 degrees for at least 30 minutes.
- Right before you want to bake, remove one basket of dough from the fridge.
- Flip the dough over onto lightly floured parchment paper (so now the bottom is the top)
- Lightly dust the top with flour.
- Use a razor to score your dough. Hold lame or razor at 30-degree angle to the dough surface and cut about 1/2 inch deep into the dough using swift, confident motions.
- Use two hands to lift your parchment paper that the dough rests on, and put it in your preheated dutch oven.
- Bake with the dutch oven lid on at 500 degrees for 20 minutes.
- Drop the heat to 475 degrees and bake with dutch oven lid off for 20 minutes (or until a nice brown crust has formed overtop).
- Remove from oven and let it rest for an hour (this is the worst part, I know!).
- Repeat with second loaf
Notes
- Grams vs. Cups – it’s best to weigh the ingredients for sourdough bread. My recipe doesn’t even suggest cups measurements because everyone’s starter, flour and salt weight different amounts. So 1 cup of your starter could weigh something totally different than 1 cup of my starter. Sourdough bread is fickle and needs precise grams of each ingredient.
- Let your baked bread rest – I know you wont like me for this, but you really do need to let your bread rest for an hour after taking out of the oven. It continues cooking below that delicious looking crust.
- Scoring – there is a purpose to scoring! It directs the flow of what’s called “rapid expansion” and without scoring, your bread could rapidly expand in areas where you don’t want it to. Basically scoring is a control mechanism for where the bread will expand.
- Stretch and folds – you know those gorgeous holes in sourdough bread? This is what creates those! You definitely do not want to skip this step.
About Me
So I let the dough sit for several hours as instructed after the initial stretch and folds and it’s VERY flat. Did i over do it? I’m going to move on to the next steps and Try to shape for the fridge fermenting but how MANY hours is optimal for that first bulk ferment?
With sourdough, I really cannot give an exact number of hours since there are so many other variables that affect the dough. If your house is around 70 degrees with low humidity, I would do the bulk ferment for about 6 hours – if your house is hotter then you’d do less time, if cooler, do more time. If its flat you may have overfermented, but keep following along, shape the dough, refrigerate, then bake the next day – it’ll still be edible even if it isn’t perfect. 🙂
Can I cut recipe in half to make only one loaf?
Definitely! I do it all the time!
Can I let rest in fridge for 24hrs?
Hi Haylie,
You bet! You can let it rest for several days until you’re ready to bake. I often make double batches of this and use them throughout the week. The loaves that have been in there for a while are a little more sour than the earlier ones but still delish!
Are you supposed to refrigerate over night before baking? It doesn’t say in the instructions how long to refrigerate for.
Yes, refrigerate overnight. At a minimum, I’d say 6 hours. I’ll update the post to make it more clear!
Can I let rest in fridge for 24hrs?
When do you put the garlic into the bread?
Right before the first stretch and fold.
Thank you! It’s in the blog post but not the actual recipe… just FYI.
Have the breads in the oven 🙂 will report back soon!
Ewa, Thanks for letting me know! I changed it in the printable recipe yesterday when you asked. So happy you said something. YAY! How did they turn out??
How did your bread turn out?
Oh wow. This looks amazing. And I bet the whole house will smell glorious when it bakes!
It seriously is unbelievable! Almost better than cookies. 🙂
I have never made home made bread. This looks so yummy. There is nothing like warm bread served right out the oven. With fall approaching, this would be great in soups and chili. Will be making this weekend. Thanks so much for sharing.
Ahhh yes! It’s the perfect bread for soup! We also love making sandwiches out of it. There’s nothing like a sandwich made with fresh bread!
This bread looks delicious! I haven’t tried making sourdough yet, but after reading this post, I got inspired to try it. Thank you for sharing!
Ada you have to try it! It’s wonderful, and the process of making it is so therapeutic! Hands in dough, making something healthy for your family. nothing like it!
Mmmm…I can smell the goodness from here. Can’t wait to try this
Yay!! Let me know how you like it 🙂 We love it in this house!
I haven’t added garlic to my sourdough yet and need to give it a try!
Catherine, It’s a match made in heaven!