Following my cooking frozen meat in our Instant Pot experiment, I decided to try something else with the Instant Pot – making a loaf of sourdough-like bread.
I say “sourdough-like” bread because I don’t actually have a sourdough starter anymore (I was bad and I let my over-100 year old starter die). So technically speaking, this wasn’t a sourdough bread. Just sourdough-like.
To make the bread I started with my usual dry ingredients: 3 cups of flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt, 3/4 teaspoon of yeast, and a 1/2 teaspoon of sugar. I whisked that all together in my stainless steel mixing bowl and then I added the surprise ingredient – 1 1/2 cups of plain, unflavoured Greek style yogurt.
That’s what gives the bread the sourdough-like taste.
I stirred in the yogurt until there was a pretty firm ball of dough and then I quite vigorously kneaded the dough.
At this point I also added a sprinkle of “Herbs de Provence” to add another dimension to the bread.
Then the Instant Pot came into play. Rather than actually using the Instant Pot to bake the bread, I used it to “proof” the bread. I started by placing a piece of parchment paper inside the Instant Pot and then putting the ball of well kneaded dough on the parchment paper inside the Instant Pot.
After putting on the pot lid, I then activated the Instant Pot to the “yogurt” setting for 4 hours.
At that point I could’ve baked the bread, but I was tired and didn’t feel like baking so I just left the “proofed” bread sitting overnight in the IP.
In the morning I put my cast iron Dutch oven in the oven and cranked up the oven to 450°. Twenty minutes later I took out the Dutch oven, plopped in the ball of dough, cut a few slashes on the top of the dough, put the lid on the Dutch oven, and fired it back into the up-to-temperature oven for 25 minutes.
After 25 minutes I took the lid off the Dutch oven and slid it back into the oven for another 10 minutes so that the top of the loaf developed a brown and crispy crust.
The end result was a beautiful loaf of bread with just a hint of sourdough flavour. And of course the best part? Both kids loved the bread and willingly ate it!