The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Reinhart's Potato Rosemary Bread

Yumarama's picture
Yumarama

Reinhart's Potato Rosemary Bread

This is from a recipe in Peter Reinhart’s Bread Bakers Apprentice and I didn’t make any changes to the recipe, being the first try at it. 

Well, ok, one or two very minor changes: he asks for fresh rosemary, I only had dried which I soaked for an hour while the dough was warming up. He says to mix in roasted garlic - didn’t have any. I guess next time I’ll have to make that ahead of time along with the extra mash. 

Anyway… here’s the final product, first try (slashed a bit too deep) and the loaves are still cooling so I haven’t cut or tasted yet but boy-oh-boy, does the house ever smell wonnnnnnderful!!

Potato Rosemary Bread
Full post on the blog: Potato Rosemary Boules

 

Comments

flourgirl51's picture
flourgirl51

They look wonderful! I have a question about his book. Are the recipes listed in percentages or grams or what?

Yumarama's picture
Yumarama

This recipe is from BBA where he gives cups & spoons (volume), ounces (weight) and also includes Baker's Percentages, although I've read around here his percentage formula isn't the same as others (Hamelman for example). I don't use percentages so I haven't paid much attention to this aspect to see what's different in how these two bread titans figure these amounts. 

His next book will include grams. In the meantime, I've been penciling in the gram equivalents into this book.

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Edit: There's a bit of a discussion on Bakers Percentage here that may help clarify the different ways of calculating, if anyone is interested.

LindyD's picture
LindyD

I bet they'll taste as good as they look.  Be sure to let us know.

Flourgirl, the BBA lists the formulas by volume as well as by weight (ounces), plus the baker's percentage for the final dough.

 

celestica's picture
celestica

I made them as well, they tasted amazing.  For garlic I fried crushed garlic in the oil called for in the recipe as I did not have time to roast any.  It was great.

 

 

Yumarama's picture
Yumarama

that was darn clever!! Good thinking! I'll be sure to do that too next time, roasted garlic simply isn't a staple we tend to make around here. 

Yumarama's picture
Yumarama

So a wee bit of searching brought this up:

http://blog.kingarthurflour.com/2008/05/01/roasting-garlic-more-than-one-way-to-get-a-head/

Seems you can roast the separate garlic buds in about 20 minutes as opposed to the whole head in an hour. The whole-head deal is preferred if you're serving it as an appetizer but the single cloves are better if the garlic will never be seen since they cook faster and you get more garlic out of the whole deal.

They say you can also freeze the garlic for up to three months and suggest portioning it out in tablespoons to freeze in a set quantity. 

I may be off to the grocery store to go get me a strand(?) of garlic today... 

davidm's picture
davidm

I've been meaning to try this bread myself. Good as it looks here, I'm about out of excuses.

Let us know how it tastes, will ya?

Yumarama's picture
Yumarama

ABSOLUTELY AWESOME. I'm going to say it's probably one of the nicest breads I've made yet. Granted, it's not the kind of bread you'd have all the time so it's probably better to keep this sort of thing to the occasional taste treat list and try to let it remain "special".

But darn it's good!!

I do wish I'd made use of fresh rosemary though. I think that would have made the herb flavour even more interesting. As would the roasted garlic.

Next time, for sure.

flourgirl51's picture
flourgirl51

I am just wondering if this bread keeps well- say a day or two.

Yumarama's picture
Yumarama

and it's still in good condition (the fact enough survived to make it to day three is astounding). It may have another good day left. I think the flavour has intensified a bit, perhaps it's the dried rosemary finally giving up it's aroma.

This bread gets two BIG thumbs up. I may have to borrow someone else's thumb for the next round as I plan to use fresh rosemary and add roasted garlic.

cfmuirhead's picture
cfmuirhead

I was tempted to try this bread by your lovely pictures.  It worked but for my first try I must say they did not look as good as yours.  I used half the batch to make about 10 small dinner rolls (these came out perfect) and 1 boule.  The boule did not rise in the oven and my first impression is that the rising time suggested by Reinhart, for my kitchen conditions and yeast, was too long.  I had read similar comments about Reinhart's recipe in TFL.  I baked the rolls first and while they cooked left the boule to continue proofing; this was about 25 mins more than the rolls, a total of about 2 hours. I will try again and reduce the length of proofing next time.   But, a great recipe and now your pictures give me something to aim at!