This is a version of my basic bread, with the heady addition of roasted garlic and rosemary. Rosemary is a wonderful herb with a lovely folklore built up around it and its connections to the Virgin Mary. Legend has it that when fleeing from Isreal to Egypt, she draped her blue cloak on the rosemary bush to dry and some of the blue dye bled off onto the flowers of the rosemary plant, turning them cornflower blue, which is why rosemary flowers are blue. The plant is called the “rose of Mary,” or rosemary, in her honor.
Rosemary and roasted garlic are particularly delicious combination. While one must generally use a gentle hand with rosemary because its strong flavor can take over a dish, baked goods are a little different–the flour will absorb a lot of the flavors, so in order to give the bread a good punch of the herbs, I use two whole heads of garlic and a couple of tablespoons of very finely chopped fresh rosemary for this bread. Oh–and don’t try to use dried rosemary for this recipe–you’ll end up with twiggy bits that just aren’t pleasant. I’ve never tried ground rosemary, but what’s nice about the fresh rosemary is the rosemary oil that permeates through the bread.
Rosemary and Roasted Garlic Bread
Ingredients
Instructions
-
Heat your oven to 400*. Pull away any excess feathery paper from your heads of garlic. Chop the tops off them and drizzle a little good quality olive oil over top of them. Place them on a sheet of non-stick aluminum foil (rub a little oil of the foil if you don't have the non-stick variety) and then seal them up in a foil packet, with little room at the top.
-
Give them about 30-35 minutes and then see how they're doing. You want them to be starting to get a little caramelized on top, but not too brown. The cloves should be softened, but not mushy, or else you won't be able to pull the cloves out of their segments.
-
The best utensil for pulling the cloves out of their little cocoons? my granny's silver-plate cocktail fork-ha! But seriously--notice that the cloves are still intact, just softened up and a little caramelized on top.
-
Roughly chop the roasted garlic--you want it in pieces that will still be recognizable, but not so big that someone will get a big bite of garlic. Chop the rosemary up very fine--and don't be worried about the amount--it looks like a lot, but the flour will absorb the flavor nicely.
-
Dissolve yeast in 1/2 cup warm water, and let sit for about five minutes. Dissolve honey in 2 1/4 cups warm water. Add flour, salt, rosemary and garlic to the large mixing bowl of an automatic mixer*** which has the bread dough hook attachment installed. Start mixer and run for a few seconds to make sure the ingredients are evenly dispersed; add yeast-water mixture and honey-water mixture to the flour/salt/herb mixture. Mix until a ball forms. If too sticky, add a little more flour. After about 5 minutes of kneading, add the butter in bits. Add more flour if necessary. Let the machine knead the dough for for about 20-25 minutes more. In a luke warm place, let bread rise, covered for two hours.
-
The dough should have about doubled in size by now.
Many recipes will tell you to "punch" the dough down. This has always felt a little too violent--like you're taking out your frustrations on the dough. I prefer to carefully pull the dough away from the sides of bowl, letting the air sort of "wheeze" out. Gently form the dough back into a ball, cover again and then let rise in a luke warm place for about 1.5 hours.
Deflate again and divide into loaf pans and let rise for 1 hour.
I usually use two large or one medium size loaf pan and then 3-4 little loaf pans. Once fully cooled after baking, I place the little loaves into freezer-safe bags and freeze them for several weeks, to be pulled out and defrosted when a loaf of home made bread is in order.
I usually do all my proofing in the oven--it's just a convenient place that I can keep at a gently warm temperature and where the bread is protected from drafts and such.
I don't preheat the oven. Once I think the bread has risen enough, I remove whatever cover I have on the bread and start the oven. The bread will rise a little more as the oven heats up, but not a lot.
-
Turn oven on to 350* and bake for about 30 minutes, or until bread is golden brown. Turn out onto a clean dish towel and let cool for a few minutes before devouring warm with butter and perhaps even some cheese.
