Loaf Kneaded with Butter (or olive oil)

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/miscellany_pdf/Misc9recipes.pdf
Loaf Kneaded with Butter (Non-dairy Version)
Andalusian p. A-24

Take three ratls of white flour and knead it with a ratl of butter and when the mixing is complete, leave it to rise and make bread from it; send it to the oven in a dish and when it has cooked, turn it on the other side in another dish and return it to the oven. When it is thoroughly cooked, take it out of the oven, then cover it a while and present it.

5 c flour unsifted (1 1/2 lb)                               1 c water
1/2 lb butter    (or olive oil)                               1 c sourdough starter

Note: we assume that “make bread from it” requires water and leavening.
Melt butter and mix into flour. Mix lukewarm water with sourdough starter and stir into flour
mixture; knead until smooth. Cover bowl with damp cloth and let rise about 15 hours, it will rise
somewhat faster in a warm place. Shape into single round loaf about 1 1/2 " thick and 8" in
diameter. Heat oven to 350°. Bake bread about 45 minutes on ungreased cookie sheet; flip onto
second cookie sheet and bake another 15 minutes. Remove from oven, put on wooden board and
cover with cloth for 10 minutes, then serve.

In honor of our Baroness and anyone else who can't have dairy I used olive oil instead of butter.
One person who I asked to taste it commented that it needed salt, I hadn't realized it didn't have any. I
will have to see how much salt works next time I make it. For the flour I used 1 cup of bread flour and
the rest was a mix of half whole wheat, half all purpose white and a little wheat germ to approximate
the flour that was used in the middle ages which had most of the bran sifted (bolted) out. I was very
surprised that this bread didn't have the strong sour flavor that many of my sourdough breads do. I
think it was the fat content of the olive oil (when you make yogurt the more fat content of the milk the sweeter the yogurt turns out.) It may have also helped that it was a newly made sourdough so it may not have turned as sour as if it had been older.