This Cracked Pepper and Sea Salt Sourdough Bread is always a tasty and mouthwatering way to bake up a loaf of sourdough.
It may seem like such a simple thing to add black pepper and sea salt to the top of a sourdough boule. But by grinding fresh black pepper and sea salt to the top of your sourdough loaf just before baking will change your life. It sure has mine! Every time I bring one of these beauties to The Lion King, I get people who I never even see on a regular basis come and seek me out to give me a compliment to how amazing my bread is. The salt and the bite of the pepper compliment and bring out all the other flavors of slow-fermented sourdough bread. And when you take a bite of the chewy crust, the flavor of salty, peppery and sour tang of sourdough just explodes in your mouth. The pepper and salt don’t overpower they just seem to enhance what is already going on.
It is funny to me that I can and have made many versions of sourdough, I’ve added black olives, walnuts, capers, all kinds of cheeses, and even chunks of salami. I’ve laminated the dough and made angel biscuits, I’ve cooked the most amazing sourdough waffles. All of them are excellent recipes of sourdough. Some of them I’ve posted and some I will post in the future. But I seem to get more significant reactions when I bake a couple of loaves of Cracked Pepper and Sea Salt. I wonder if maybe it is just the simplicity of this bread.
If you want to a change from your regular Sourdough baking, this is an easy and quite spectacular way to bring a little zip to your game. I’m not going to post a recipe for how to do a basic sourdough dough here, I’ve got an older post on my methods here and the caper version here. Both are fantastic with the topping with this easy method.
When you unmold your dough and before you slash the finished loaves either onto wet parchment or on your floured (or cornmeal dusted) peel depending on your preferred baking method. Wet heavily by brush, spray bottle, or how I sometimes do it, by just going over the top of the whole dough with very wet hands. Take a pepper grinder set it to a coarse grind and grind directly over the dough generously. Coating the entire top and side as much as desired. Then sprinkle on the sea salt, I used this Himalayan pink salt which isn’t really sea salt except for when it was deposited in a sea bed a very long time ago, it is very tasty though. But you can use any large crystal sea salt. I think the fine crystals would dissolve into the water and wouldn’t give the same effect.
Then slash your loaves as you would normally. The key is to make sure it is wet enough for the cracked pepper and sea salt to stick to the crust but not wet enough to slip off. I have started to push my retard of the final rising in the fridge to 3 whole days. That extra time has given my bread a really great sour flavor. And for those of you who always seem ask; my dough is close to 75% hydration. It always seems someone asks…lol
This Cracked Pepper and Sea Salt sourdough it so good just on its own. But it also makes incredible sandwiches. I made a pastrami one that knocked my socks off. Try it with turkey or even tuna for an amazing experience. I love this pepper grinder I have had for more than 20 years and I often give it out to loved ones as a great gift and once again this pink salt is a great salt I use all the time. I promise you this will take your sourdough bread to a different level. Let me know in the comments what you have topped your sourdough with.
