Sourdough bialy with rosemary

I had never heard about bialy until a week ago when I stumbled upon a recipe while searching for new sourdough inspirations. It seemed interesting, so I decided to do some research.
I found a lot of other recipes, but not so much history about this Polish bread, except that it probably originated from the area around Bialystok in the northeast of Poland.

It reminds a lot of a small pizza with the depression in the middle, filled with sauteed onions. Some recipes claim that a traditional Bialy shall also contain garlic and poppyseed and even breadcrumbs.
But nobody seems to know for sure.
If there is anybody out there who can enlighten us about this, it would be most welcome.
Most recipes used commercial yeast, but as you have probably figured out, I will go for a sourdough starter instead.

PREPARING THE DOUGH.

I followed the same routine as I do when baking any ordinary sourdough bread. I mixed flour and water with sourdough starter and left it to rest for an hour. After that, I incorporated the salt with a few stretch and folds. If you are unfamiliar with the stretch and fold technique, you can read about it in this blog post. There are also some very good videos on YouTube.

BULK FERMENTATION

I always try to find a warm place for bulk fermentation. 78ºF/25ºC is my preferred temperature. That’s not always easy during winter time here in Sweden. But this day I was lucky. The sun was shining from a clear blue sky, and all I had to do was placing the bowl with the dough near one of the kitchen windows. It only took 3.5 hours for the dough to rise to a required level. Normally I use to let it double in size.

And now you are wondering how I know when the dough has doubled in size? Everybody knows that it’s almost impossible by just eyeballing the dough.
It’s easy.
You just take a small piece of the dough and place it in a glass or jar with straight sides. Mark the beginning level with a rubber band or similar and let it ferment together with the rest of the dough. Now it’s easy to see when the dough has doubled its volume.

FINAL RISE AND BAKING

Final rise is not that crucial when it comes to Bialys. At least I didn’t think so. I mean, It’s more or less a pizza, I said to myself.
But it turned out to be slightly more important than I believed.
I will come back to that later.
When you form a Bialy, you start with a dough roll that has rested for some time. In my case, the final rise was one hour. You form an indent in the middle of the dough roll and expand it outward, leaving a 1-inch rim.

You fill the indent with sauteed onions or whatever fillings you prefer. Except for onions, I added garlic. Instead of poppyseed, I used rosemary, mostly because I didn’t have any poppyseed at hand.
I realize that it’s not very traditional, but rosemary is a safe card.
It can be used to almost all sorts of bread if you ask me. Think Ciabatta, Focaccia or Fougasse.

As mentioned the final rise was one hour, but I realized afterward that it should have been longer. There was still too much strength in the dough, and the indent filled up too much during baking.
I think an extra 30 minutes or even an hour would have solved it.
My conclusion is that it’s better to overproof your Bialys a bit.
And I learned that the final rise was more important than I thought.
But that’s what’s so exciting about baking with sourdough. Even the seemingly simple things turn out to be a real challenge. You never stop learning.

SUMMING-UP

The overall impression of these little bread is very positive. It has many similarities with pizza, and I think that baking with sourdough starter instead of yeast lifts it to another level. You get that nice texture and taste that I like so much about sourdough bread.
Next time I will try something else than just onions and herbs for topping though. I can see the potential for variation, even if it will make it less traditional.

Sourdough bialy with rosemary

Sourdough bialy filled with sauteed onions, garlic, and a pinch of rosemary. These little Polish pizzas are great on the buffet table

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Servings 10 bread

Ingredients

  

1x2x3x

• 150 gram mature sourdough starter The starter used in this recipe has 100% hydration
• 450 gram Wheat flour
• 300 gram water
• 9 gram sea salt
• 1 rosemary a pinch for each bialy
• 2 yellow onions
• 2 garlic cloves
• salt to taste

Instructions

 

• Mix flour, water, and starter. Make sure that all flour is hydrated. Let the dough rest for at least an hour.
• Add salt and perform one set of stretch and fold.
• Let the dough ferment for 3- 4 hours, or until it has doubled in size at a temperature of 78ºF/25ºC. Use the dough-in-the-glass test described above. You can perform 3-4 stretch and fold sessions during the bulk fermentation.
• Lightly flour your work surface and dump out the dough. Divide it into ten pieces with your bench knife. Form each piece of dough to a roll.
• Let the rolls rise for at least an hour. Preheat the oven to 480ºF / 250ºC together with a baking stone if you have one. Otherwise, you can use a baking sheet.
• Chop the onion and mince the garlic. Sautee the onion on medium heat for 2-3 minutes in olive oil or butter. Add garlic at the end. Add salt to taste.
• Dust your working surface with flour and start forming the bialys. Make an indent in the middle of the roll and work outwards until a 1-inch rim remains. Make sure to get the bottom as thin as possible.
• Transfer the bialy to a parchment paper and fill the indent with onion and garlic and sprinkle some rosemary on top.
• Bake for 20-30 minutes or until the bialys has got a nice golden brown color.

Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!