Homemade Jam on EASY Sourdough

Do you still have a freezer full of berries from when you picked fruit this summer? If so, great! Turn it into homemade jam! You can keep a jar or two out that you plan to use quickly, then freeze the rest. Straight-sided jelly jars are freezer safe, as well as most Pyrex containers. I typically follow the recipe exactly as printed on the Sure-Jell Low Sugar Pectin container for the best results. There are plenty of recipes to be found online, but since pectin can vary, it’s best to stick to whatever the package recommends!

Pictured above: sourdough bread made with water and avocado oil yields a bread with a lighter crust

Now, on to the EASY sourdough bread recipe. I know many people love to make beautiful artisan sourdough bread recipes with pretty scoring patterns, dusted with rice flour and baked to perfection in a Dutch oven. I love that kind of bread too and I make it that way for company or to complement certain dinner recipes. If you want to make your own sourdough starter and learn to make artisan sourdough bread, you should check out Tess Weaver’s Sourdough at Home course! It really is a labor of love, and the artisan process is one that can’t be replicated with shortcuts.

That said, while I love good crusty sourdough bread, my kids don’t care for a hard crust and my time for tending to dough and baking is limited. I realized that I needed soft-crust sandwich bread as a replacement for buying rolls or sandwich bread as well as for our morning toast. Plus, I often find that yeast bread can cause bloating, but sourdough bread doesn’t! The reason for this is probably because sourdough’s longer fermentation time helps break down the gluten, making it more tolerable for people with mild gluten sensitivities.

I knew that I wanted to be able to make sourdough sandwich bread regularly, but I also recognized that I’m a busy mom juggling homeschooling and work, so I needed a solution to make this realistic. I remembered having a bread maker many years ago that I eventually got rid of because the bread I made it in was so dry and flavorless that it wasn’t worth keeping!

However, I began to research bread machines that you can make sourdough bread in and found a perfect solution! The Zojirushi Bread Maker Supreme allows you to customize the settings for the kneading time, rising time and baking time for your bread. I found a good deal on a lightly used Zojirushi bread machine on Facebook Marketplace a few months ago and have been experimenting with recipes. I’ve successfully made dozens of loaves of yeast-free sourdough bread with it, but this recipe is by far my favorite!

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Pictured above: sourdough bread made with milk and butter yields a more golden crust and softer texture

This recipe uses a combination of bread flour and whole wheat flour for complexity of flavor and calls for milk (or dry milk) and butter to give it a soft, buttery texture. I’ve also used olive oil or avocado oil and just water to make a vegan version, but butter and milk are my preference!

If you don’t have a customizable bread machine, you can probably still get similar results. I would let your machine do one full dough cycle, then let it rise on its own in the machine for a few hours and then re-start the bread cycle from the beginning to let it rise further prior to baking. Mine preheats and then kneads for 7 minutes, rises for 7 hours, kneads again and rises for another 1 hour, then bakes for 1 hour and 5 minutes. I love that I can throw this all in the machine after dinner and wake up to fresh, warm bread for breakfast!

Don’t have sourdough starter? My sister-in-law makes bread like this with long fermentation times and just 1/4 tsp. yeast with similar results, but I haven’t tried it yet! Or better yet, make your own starter using Tess Weaver’s method.

Let me know if you try this recipe, and be sure to make it with some tasty jam! If you don’t have any berries left from your summer pick-your-own hauls, you can find a variety of jams available in our farm market.