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Hello Melissa, Thank you for a beautiful Herb & Tahini sourdough Bread. My next bread will be this one with 2 oz of sesame seeds. All your breads look great. Thank you very much. Best to you, Mike
You’re welcome – good luck with your bake.
Hello Melissa. It is your Denver baker fan. So, this recipe looks terrific. But, I still have 12# of red fife flour from you all to use, so just cannot get any more. Do you think this loaf could use the red fife? It is so good and I need to use it. This recipe appeals to my “sourdoughness” a great deal. It has such a nice rise. I did use the red fife in a loaf that I converted to a sourdough with additions of dried fruits. The taste was wonderful, but it was a short loaf. (No stretch and folds.) Thank you, as always, for your find assistance.
I am looking forward to making this with the Rouge de Bordeaux wheatberries I purchased a month ago. It has been a delicious addition to everything I’ve put it in so far. When you say sourdough starter, do you mean recently fed starter, or is it possible to use discard? Thanks in advance.
I think red fife will work nicely in this dough. I hope you enjoy the bread.
Rouge de bordeaux sounds good too.
You can use discard, but the timing of the bulk fermentation will be significantly longer.
If your discard is super old (many weeks), you might also just use a small amount of it, and make up the difference with plain flour and water – that way you won’t get acidity and possible dough weakness (microbes will have eaten the protein) from a full 100g of starter.
This blog post and the comments that follow explore using tiny amounts of old starter.
Hi Melissa all your posts are incredibly interesting and thank you for your recipes and tips! Just FYI the link you have included under ‘gluten development’ are about shaping and not about folding.
I want to thank you again. Ale
Thank you for catching that! I’m glad you enjoy the recipe and tips.
I baked the Herb and Sourdough Bread today. ( started last night) and it is delicious and has wonderful texture. I happened to have tahini , so immediately thought to bake this. It has a light herb flavor and surprise of lemon.
Thank you for the recipe. Louise
That’s lovely! Thank you for trying the recipe and sharing your photos.
I used tahini once in sourdough, albeit with no extra herbs or spices, and it turned out wonderful. I can just imagine what it’ll be like with all the other additions. Looks and sounds delicious.
I baked this yesterday. Nice open crumb, good flavor. I was able to detect the tahini in the taste, but the herbs and lemon not so much. I do have a cold, so maybe my taste buds are just not up to speed, or my dried herbs are old. I did not retard overnight. Also, I didn’t have any sprouted flour on hand, so I milled some Yacora Roja.
I’m going to bake it again, only using the all-in method, using my Kitchen Aid, four folds and an overnight retard to see if there is much of a difference.
Thank you for this recipe. I think I could have done a better job distributing the herbs/pepper, etc. (I don’t think I flattened the dough enough to mix it up), but the crumb is lovely and the flavor of the lemon and pepper really delicious and strong. Definitely worth doing again. Thanks!
Hello Melissa,
A timely post! I spied a jar of tahini in my pantry a couple of weeks ago and my wheels started spinning…
I’m curious about the amount of tahini in your formula. It works out to be 3% of the total flour (excluding starter); was that purposeful or just what a tablespoon of tahini turned out to weigh? I would like to extrapolate the formula to make about ten loaves and so I’m wondering if 3% is the right amount. Could you taste the tahini in the finished bread, or was lemon more the dominant flavor?
Thanks in advance for your time and expertise!
Michelle
@Abe Thanks. Do you recall how much tahini you used? I’m intrigued by the different impressions people’s taste buds are getting from this loaf 
@tagineboy I look forward to hearing how your all-in method goes. I truly think it will turn out just as good as the multi-stage process. Interesting that you picked up the tahini strongest while @dgb detected the herbs and lemon the most. The different age of the herbs makes sense, also size of the lemon that’s being zested. My mint is <1 year from my yard, dried as whole(ish) leaves and then I crush it when I’m ready to use it. My oregano was store bought but just the week prior…not that I needed new oregano lol.
@DGB You’re welcome. That loaf looks beautiful. I agree the even laminating of these additions is a little tricky. Maybe more coil folds is the key, or all-in mixing, or tahini at mixing and just herbs and zest sprinkled during lamination.
@finndavey There seem to be many impressions of what is the dominant flavor. In my loaf, no one flavor dominated. I could smell/taste the herbs and the tahini, so perhaps lemon was the weakest…
I went with 1 Tbsp tahini because that is the amount of fat/oil I would usually use for that amount of flour. Maybe you could try a test loaf before you make 10. That way you can adjust the elements before committing to large batch.
Dried herbs in particular are tricky because small amounts are difficult to weigh and how much people pack them into a measuring spoon is so varied.
Hi Melissa. This is a great recipe. Thanks for it. I baked it this morning, and it is truly delicious. I used sprouted spelt flour, sesame seed and lemon pepper seasoning with the herbs. I had a good rise. My dough was on the wet side, so I baked it in a Pullman pan. I also had a few olives kicking around which got added into the dough. The combination is really wonderful. It will be one of my favourites from now on.
This was so delicious! I subbed the mint out for thyme and tarragon as my husband doesn’t like mint. It smelled so good (my dog agreed) and I couldn’t wait for it to cool all the way. It was so good with honey goat cheese. I’ll be making a sandwich with it later thanks for yet another awesome recipe!
Look at that cute doggie! And beautiful bread too 
I’m glad you like that recipe. Tarragon and thyme sound delicious too.
I hope to make this bread tomorrow. I love the combo of tahini and rosemary. But I wonder if I can use all bread flour for this recipe. I had to toss all my other flour because it was OLD. Thanks very much,
Diane
