SourTube: Add Inclusions Like a Pro With the Lamination Method (feat. Cider Press Lane)

📺 SourTube pick: This is a curated video — we didn't make it, we just love it and think you will too. All credit belongs to the creator below. Watch it, learn from it, then go show them some love.

Today's pick: How to Add Flavor Inclusions to Sourdough Rustic Loaves and Sandwich Bread

Creator: Kelly from Cider Press Lane — a homestead kitchen channel out of Washington where Kelly bakes big-batch sourdough, grows dahlias, and donates a share of her business profits to fight human trafficking.
Watch on YouTube: How to Add Flavor Inclusions to Sourdough Rustic Loaves and Sandwich Bread | Kelly LIVE Replay!
More from Kelly: find her at ciderpresslane.com/blog for recipes, e-cookbooks, and the full sourdough playlist, or on YouTube at @ciderpresslane

If the embed doesn't load, watch it directly on YouTube here.

Why we picked this one

Here's the thing nobody warns you about with inclusions: tossing a handful of jalapeños and cheddar into your dough at the wrong moment can turn your beautiful loaf into a gummy, dense brick with a sad strip of cheese running through it like a fault line. Inclusions are where confident bakers go to get humbled — and this is the video that keeps the humbling to a minimum. Kelly walks through her whole inclusion method live, warts and all, using lamination instead of folding the mix-ins in during stretch and folds. Stretch the dough paper-thin, scatter your goodies across it, then fold it up envelope-style. That's it. That's the whole trick — and it disperses everything far more evenly than kneading chunks into a resisting ball of dough ever could.

What we love is that she doesn't just show one technique and call it a day. She lays down her 20% rule (inclusions should total no more than 20% of your flour weight), explains when different add-ins go in — because sugary, oily, or antimicrobial mix-ins behave very differently from a handful of walnuts — and walks through shaping a loaded dough without tearing it apart. There's a whole chapter on how much sugar you can get away with before it leaks and burns, plus her 450° bake method and the thermometer check she swears by for knowing when the loaf is actually done. For a LIVE replay, it plays like a masterclass: cheese, herbs, dried fruit, nuts, even chocolate — every category gets its moment.

But here's the detail I wish someone had told me sooner: the prep of the inclusion matters as much as the technique. Roasted garlic needs to be soft and cooled, chocolate needs to be chopped chunky enough to survive the heat, and dried fruit can hijack your hydration if you don't account for it. Kelly covers exactly this — how to prep each category so it doesn't sabotage the crumb. That's the difference between a loaf that reads "rosemary-olive bakery bread" and one that reads "olives fell off the dough and burned on the pan."

Kelly's teaching style is exactly what a nervous beginner needs: zero pretension, very practical, and she's baking in a real home kitchen with a real audience asking questions as she goes. If you've ever wanted to level up from plain loaves to jalapeño-cheddar, cinnamon-raisin, or roasted garlic parmesan, start this video at the lamination chapter and go bake.

What you'll learn

• The lamination method for inclusions: how to stretch your dough into a thin sheet, scatter mix-ins across it, and fold it envelope-style so every slice gets even flavor.
• The 20% rule: why your total add-ins should stay under 20% of flour weight — and what goes wrong when you get greedy.
• When each inclusion type goes in: why herbs, nuts, and seeds are easy early add-ins, while sugary, oily, or antimicrobial mix-ins need different timing and prep.

Our two cents to go with it

Two things worth knowing before you press play:

1. Wet hands are your best friend during lamination. Spreading dough paper-thin on the counter is an invitation for it to weld itself to the surface. A light mist of water on the counter (and on your fingertips) lets the dough release cleanly without you having to flour it — flour would just get folded into the dough and toughen the crumb. Water, thin stretch, scatter, fold. Trust the process even when it looks like the dough is winning.

2. Roasted garlic is the sleeper hit of inclusions. If you only try one of her savory ideas, make it the roasted garlic parmesan loaf. A whole head of garlic, roasted until it's jammy and sweet, loses all its bite and none of its depth — and it will never do the weird raw-garlic-meets-dough thing that undercooked alliums do in a loaf. Smear the soft cloves across your laminated sheet and thank yourself later.

And if watching this gets you itching to laminate something — but your starter keeps going flat right when the baking bug bites — that's the exact headache ours was built to solve. Ours arrives dehydrated, wakes up in days with dead-simple instructions, and gives you the steady, reliable culture that makes ambitious loaves like these actually repeatable. Grab your Squirrelly Girl Starter here 🐿️

Loved this video? Go tell Kelly — like and subscribe on YouTube so she keeps making them.

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