I used to make onion bread quite a lot during the first years of my studies. However, I somehow forgot about this type of bread until recently. Back then I used to mostly bake with yeast, though the taste is even better with a sourdough base.

Note: this bread is amazing for salty and sour toppings, but not that great for sweet ones such as jam.

If you are brand new, you might want to check out the bread basics first.

Ingredients

• 400g finely grind wheat flour
• 100g wheat bread flour
• 75g wheat levain
• 10g salt
• 350g water (70% hydration)
• 1 yellow onion
• 15g olive oil

Instructions

As a starter I would suggest this timetable with your first loafs.

Peal and dice the onion and fry it golden brown in olive oil during autolyze. Mix the cooled down onion in the dough together with the levain. In advance I thought the dough would be a bit trickier to shape as the onions might rip through the loafs skin or stick to the surface. However, I noticed no difference than to a loaf without onions.

If you do have problems shaping potentially reduce the hydration for the next time (down to 65%) as this makes shaping easier in general.

The crumb on the loaf was amazing. The loaf did not hold its form as good as I would have liked, but still looked beautiful.

Yeast Variant

If you want to use yeast rather than sourdough you can use half a cube of fresh yeast instead of the levain. Activate the yeast, while browning the onions and mix all ingredients together afterward. Let the dough rest for about 1h before shaping and another 30 minutes before baking.

Tips

The onion flavor does get more intense during the bulk fermentation (compared to a yeast based bread), even in a short 4h one. I have not yet tried a long fermentation or proofing in the fridge yet. Potentially you have to reduce the onion in that case so its flavor does not overdevelop.

Next Time..

Try to reduce the proofing time down to one hour or even less, with one reshape after 30 minutes.