Bacon Sourdough Bread

When bacon enters the land of wild yeast, it's bread meets bacon for a decadent and delicious combination. You can actually smell the bacon as this bread is baking.

The hardest part of making this bread, besides waiting for the dough to rise, is not eating bits of the cooked bacon before adding it to the dough.

Once you have a mature, active levain, this bread takes a couple of days to make, mostly inactive time.

First, feed your starter with a mixture of white flour, whole wheat flour, and water, and let it ferment all day.

In the evening, mix the dough and then do three "stretch and folds" over a couple of hours and let it rise overnight.

The next morning, shape the loaves and bake them about 3 to 4 hours later.

Ingredients:

Levain

100 grams mature active levain/sourdough starter

400 grams unbleached all purpose flour

100 grams whole wheat flour

400 grams lukewarm water

Final Dough

864 grams unbleached all purpose flour

16 grams whole wheat flour

686 grams water at about 90 degrees F

20 grams fine sea salt

1 pound of bacon, cooked to crispy, and then crumbled**

2 tablespoons reserved bacon drippings

216 grams of the levain

**(note: regular bacon reduces down to about 6 ounces, so if you use a low fat or turkey bacon, weight the bacon after cooking to add 6 ounces to the dough)