Gingerbread Sourdough Artisan Loaf
This gingerbread artisan loaf is everything you love about the holidays tucked into one beautiful sourdough loaf. It’s filled with bold ginger, warm spices, and a touch of sweetness, then baked until the crust is golden and the inside is soft, fragrant, and irresistibly festive. Pair each slice with whipped cinnamon honey butter and you’ve got the perfect holiday bread—comforting, cozy, and absolutely unforgettable.
Equipment
- Large Mixing Bowl
- Danish Dough Whisk
- Banneton Basket
- Bench Scraper
- Kitchen scale
Ingredients
For the Sweet Stiff Levain
- 25 grams starter
- 25 grams granulated sugar
- 50 grams water
- 100 grams all purpose flour
For the Dough
- all the sweet stiff levain
- 290 grams water
- 100 grams molasses
- 75 grams brown sugar
- 5 grams ground ginger 2 teaspoons
- 1/2 teaspoon ground all spice
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 500 grams bread flour
- 5 grams cinnamon 2 teaspoons
- 10 grams salt
- 10 grams water
For Cinnamon Honey Butter
- 113 grams salted butter, softened ½ cup
- 30 grams powdered sugar ¼ cup
- 20 grams honey 1 tablespoon
- 3 grams pure vanilla extract ½ teaspoon
- 5 grams ground cinnamon 2 teaspoons
- pinch of sea salt
Instructions
Make the Sweet Stiff Levain
- About 12 hours before you're ready to mix up your bread, you'll need to make your sweet stiff levain. Using a sweet levain helps to keep some of that signature sourdough tang out of your sweet loaf. You can substitute active 100% hydration starter, but the flavor will be different.
- Combine starter with sugar, flour and water and mix until everything is combined. This is a stiff starter, so it will look kind of like dough. Don't be afraid to knead your starter on the counter to make sure everything is mixed well. Cover and place somewhere warm overnight.
Mix the Dough
- Combine all of your sweet stiff levain with 290 grams of water. Use your hands to gently mix and break the starter up
- Add molasses, brown sugar, ginger, all spice, cloves, nutmeg and bread flour. Mix well until a shaggy dough forms. Then spend a couple of minutes building dough strength by doing slap and folds or using the rubaud method. Spending a couple of extra minutes up front developing the gluten will make a big difference in how your bread turns out. You could also use a stand mixer if you want for this and mix for 5 minutes.
- Cover and let rest for about an hour. . This particular loaf really needs a fermentolyse, so we’ll be adding the last 10 grams of water, salt and cinnamon into the dough a little later. Adding the extra spices really slows down fermentation, so don’t skip the fermentolyse or you may end up with a really dense loaf of bread.
- Now that we’ve completed the fermentolyse, it’s time to add the remaining ingredients. Sprinkle your salt and ground cinnamon over the top of the dough and then add the reserved 10 grams of water. Gently pinch in the salt and cinnamon until you can no longer feel any salt granules – this usually takes 2-3 minutes.
Stretch and Folds
- Perform a series of “stretch and folds” throughout the next 2 hours. This is how you strengthen your dough since we don’t knead it. First, wet your hands, so the dough doesn’t stick to it. Reach to the bottom of the bowl, pull the dough up and over and place it on the top of the dough. Turn the bowl a quarter turn and repeat the stretching and folding motion 4-6 times. You’ll notice the dough changes through this process. Your first set will look a little bit shaggy, but by the end you should have a nice, smooth and elastic dough. Cover the bowl and wait about 30 minutes in between each set of stretch and folds.
- Stretch and fold #1: 30 minutes into bulk fermentation
- Stretch and fold #2: 30 minutes later. This is when I like to add the cranberries.
- Stretch and fold #3: 30 minutes later
- Stretch and fold #4: Optional, if your dough is still really sticky or isn’t starting to hold it’s shape in your bowl you can do a fourth set to continue adding strength to the dough.
Finish bulk fermentation
- Cover the dough and let rise for 1.5-2 more hours (longer in the winter when it’s cold). You’ll know the dough is ready to shape when the dough is puffed up, jiggles when you shake the bowl, has scattered bubbles visible on the sides and top. My bulk fermentation took about 7 hours with a dough temperature of about 74F
Pre-shape
- Lightly flour your counter and place your dough on the floured counter. Gently pull your dough across your counter until you’ve got a round ball. Using a bench scraper can be helpful. The goal is to introduce some tension in your dough, but we’ll be back for the final shaping in a little bit.
Bench Rest
- Let the dough rest uncovered on the counter for about 30 minutes. The dough will probably flatten during this time. This allows the gluten in the dough to relax and prepares the dough for the final shaping.
Shaping
- Prepare your banneton basket. Sprinkle a little flour on top of the dough. Using a bench scraper, lift the dough up off the counter and place it back on the countertop – floured side down. This ensures that the flour is staying mainly on the outside of the dough.For a boule (round loaf): Going around in a circle, pull the dough sideways towards you and then fold up to the top of the round. Turn 90 degrees and repeat the same process pulling the dough sideways and then folding up to the top. As you continue this process around the dough, increase the tension as you pull. Gather the bread into a circle and place into your prepared bowl. Place into your prepared banneton basket.For a batard (oval loaf): stretch your dough into a chubby rectangle. Fold into thirds – like you would fold a letter for an envelope. Then roll the dough up and pinch the sides together. Gently pull the dough back across the counter to build tension. Place into your prepared banneton basket.
Cold Fermentation
- Cover the dough and refrigerate overnight or up to 36 hours. If you want to bake the same day, you can skip this step and let the dough rise for about 2-3 hours in the banneton basket until it’s puffed up and risen. Then bake according to recipe directions.
Day 2: Baking
- Preheat your oven and Dutch oven to 425 °F for 45 minutes.
- Once preheated, pull the loaf out of the refrigerator and remove the covering. Place a piece of parchment paper on top of the dough. Flip the dough over so it is now sitting on the parchment paper.
- Scoring: Use a bread lame score the dough. Decorative scores should be shallow. Your expansion score should be deep.
- Baking: Carefully remove the Dutch oven from the oven. Take the lid off and place your bread into the Dutch oven (including parchment paper – this helps with the transfer). Put the lid on and put back in the oven. Bake for 30 minutes, then remove the lid of the Dutch oven and continue baking for 20 minutes until the bread is a crackly deep brown. Remove the Dutch oven and place on a wire cooling rack. Your bread is fully cooked when it reaches an internal temperature of 200-210 °F. Because of the added sugar this loaf can start to darken really quickly. If your loaf is getting too dark, you can tent it with foil while it finishes baking.
- Cooling. I know it’s hard, but try to let your loaf cool for at least one hour before you slice into it.
Making the Cinnamon Honey Butter
- Add the softened butter, powdered sugar, honey, vanilla, cinnamon, and sea salt to a small mixing bowl.
- Whip with a hand mixer (or vigorously with a whisk) until light, smooth, and creamy.
- Taste and adjust as needed—add extra cinnamon for more spice or a drizzle of honey for extra sweetness.
- Serve immediately or refrigerate to firm up.
- Store in the fridge up to one week. Let set out at room temperature to soften before serving.
Notes
The added sugar makes this loaf prone to burning a bit. I like to sprinkle a handful of dried rice in the bottom of my Dutch oven before I place my parchment paper and dough in to bake. This keeps the bottom from burning.
