Instructions: Really MARVELOUS bread! Quickly disappears at parties.

Yield: two
*large* round loaves

I regularly add one step that is nonstandard: I almost always give the bread
an extra rising when the flour is half mixed in. The extra rising make the
bread smoother. With sourdough the extra rising allows the starter to many of the lumps of flour which makes the dough almost silky soft. After adding about 1/3 - 1/2 of the flour the dough is the texture of muffin, waffle
or brownie batter and I let it rise until doubled. Some of the recipes

(esp
the ones with potato) refer to this as a "slurry". Some recipes, especially
those that use potato to enhance the yeast, do call for this extra rising; however I add this step to all bread recipes. [Anne]

Remove tomatoes from their juice and dice them into small pieces. Add diced
tomatoes, about half of the juice from the canned tomatoes, tomato paste and cheese to the starter mixture. Add the melted margarine. Mix. Add the yeast.

Sift baking powder and salt with 2 cups of flour. Add to the starter mixture.

You should have a slurry the consistancy of brownie batter (add another cup of
flour if need be).

Let the slurry rise until doubled in bulk. Add the rest of the flour 1 cup at
a time. When the mixture is too stiff to stir, continue adding flour while
kneading it in the bowl. Turn out onto a floured board and knead (while adding flour as neede). The dough should be very smooth and silky.

The dough rise until doubled. It rises fairly quickly. Punch down and divide
into 2 or 2 1/2 loaves. Form into loaves and place in greased loaf pans or
greased 8-9" pie pans. I use 2 pie pans and a small half-loaf pan; the round
loaves are huge! Let rise. Bake at 375 degrees for about 40 minutes.

Variation: add some refreshed dried tomatoes. You might want to cut down on
the tomato paste and tomato juice with this variation.

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