The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Rosemary Olive Oil Bread

Floydm's picture
Floydm

Rosemary Olive Oil Bread

Daniel T. Dimuzio's new book Bread Baking: An Artisan's Perspective is a textbook on the craft of artisan bread baking.  As such, there is more emphasis on understanding your ingredients and technique rather than on recipes.  That said, the book does contain an appendix of reliable formulas, one of which caught my eye this afternoon. 

As can be seen in the photo, some of my techniques, such as my scoring, still leave a lot to be desired, but this bread was quite simple to make, made the house smell great, and tasted delicious.

Rosemary Olive Oil Bread (makes 2 loaves)

Pre-ferment
250g bread or AP flour
170g water
5g salt
2g instant yeast

Final Dough
750g bread or AP flour
510g water
40g extra-virgin olive oil
5g rosemary leaves, chopped
15g salt
5g instant yeast
427g pre-ferment

Combine the ingredients to make the preferment the night before baking.  Leave them out at room temperature for roughly an hour and then refrigerate overnight.

The next day, combine the remaining ingredients with the pre-ferment.  Use your preferred mixing and baking technique, which for me was about 8 minutes of mixing in the standmixer followed by a 3 hour bulk fermentation with two folds.  Shape, score, and bake your loaves as appropriate for the shape you choose, which for me was roughly an hour final rise followed by 20 minutes in my steamed oven at 475.

Bread Baking: An Artisan's Perspective is available from Wiley & Sons.

Read a Q & A with Dan DiMuzio here.

 

 

pmccool's picture
pmccool

Floyd,

That looks wonderful!  And I'm pretty sure your scoring issues didn't hurt the flavor any.

A question: since the rosemary is to be chopped, am I right in supposing that you used fresh rosemary, rather than dried?

Paul

Floydm's picture
Floydm

I actually had dried rosemary, so I just crumbled it up.

ivyb's picture
ivyb

That bread looks AWESOME!  Lucky are the folks who get to eat it...

 

Peace,

ivyb,ny

DrPr's picture
DrPr

I love this bread and it's always a hit with friends. I've made rosemary olive oil bread using Nancy Silverton's recipe, which is pure sourdough. I'm curious to try this version now!

ques2008's picture
ques2008

great-looking muscles!

bonnibakes's picture
bonnibakes

This is my first posting and the Rosemary Olive Oil Bread caught my attention since I'm surrounded by heavenly rosemary bushes. Is there a place on this site where I could convert your weights to oz/lbs? I weigh all my ingredients using a Berkel scale I bought used years ago (made in England). It came without a manual and I don't know if it's capable of measuring anything other than oz/lbs.

Floydm's picture
Floydm

Paste "750 grams in ounces" (without the quotes) into Google and it'll convert it for you.

sojourner's picture
sojourner

Floydm,

 As others have said, your bread looks wonderful. Are you using bleached flour? I know this seems to vary from country to country. Here in the UK, none of the flours I use are bleached and, although the white flour looks very white when I open the bag, my loaves always have a very slight latte colouring when cut.

 Sojourner

 

samsara's picture
samsara

There is also a program available for free that someone mentioned here that I use from time to time now called "Convert".  I don't know if it works on anything but Windows but it converts just about any kind of measurement you can think of.

http://www.joshmadison.com/software

This recipe caught my eye too and I'm always looking for ways to use my fresh rosemary (besides huffing it ha ha ha).  I have the pre-ferment in the fridge already.

 

Dave

ashwingrao's picture
ashwingrao
blackbird's picture
blackbird

made a note, will try as soon as I can, and I recall big fresh rosemary bushes so big they had become a hedgerow.  What a treasure.

SylviaH's picture
SylviaH

My daughter's favorite bread is Rosemary.  I just picked up a new rosemary plant yesterday.. Lovely bread,  Thank you for the wonderful post!  

Sylvia

xaipete's picture
xaipete

Those are some real nice looking loaves, Floyd. I love the smell of fresh rosemary. You ought to get yourself a rosemary bush. It is one of the easiest plants to grow and nearly impossible to kill even if you completely neglect it. It has lovely flowers too and is known to repel mosquitoes. Ours just finished blooming a couple of weeks ago. This is the one herb I always have available in my yard, and it requires zero maintenance.

--Pamela

Floydm's picture
Floydm

You are right, I should. 

maswindell's picture
maswindell

How can I convert this recipe using a sourdough starter instead of yeast ?

I'm a total newbie but just trying to gain as much information and recipes as possible.

This site is a wonderful source of baking info.

cheers

jackie9999's picture
jackie9999

I was just in the garden center today looking at the herbs.  I knew I wanted basil (for pesto) and I saw the rosemary and wondered what I could do with it ....looks like I'm going back to buy it tomorrow..until then dried rosemary will have to suffice ....

Thanks for the lovely recipe..can't wait !

caviar's picture
caviar

I'm curious about the amount of roemary you use. If you used dried what weight of fresh do you think should be used.

I tried to make it following your recipe but not knowing I used fresh. The herb flavor was very very mild.

 I also had a problem with the color of the loaf. There was almost no browning so I thought that it needed more oven time. The bottom did not givea hollow sound and felt quite soft so I checked the internal temp. from the bottom. i've had the impression that bread should reach at least 205 degrees F. and it never did. The bread ended up with almost no color and a very tough crust.

 Do you have any suggestions. The bread still tasted good. Some people said it tasted like olive oil and some said they thought they could taste rosemary.

 

Herb

ehanner's picture
ehanner

Floyd's loaves are so perfect looking you can almost smell the savory aroma. One trick I learned from contributor Mark Sinclair at the Back Home Bakery in Kalispell MT helps draw the deep aroma of what ever herbs you use.

Mark says to try heating the oil for 20 seconds in a small dish then adding the savory herbs and let it sit overnight, covered. I usually chop the fresh rosemary and thyme first. The oil will take on a wonderful deep aroma that is much more than just stronger. I do this every time at the same time I mix the preferment.

Eric

caviar's picture
caviar

Many thanks for the thoughtful responses to my most recent problem. I believe I followed Floydm's recipe exactly except that I used fresh rosemary. This included a three hour bulk ferment with the oven set to 475 F for a long time. The dough swas very slack and the folds helped a lot so I was able to shape and put them in a couche(&) by hand. O f course being me I forgot to put parchment or semolina etc. on the peel. I had each loaf on small pieces of parchment so I could pick them up and place them on the peel. When I tried to slide them on to the stone they didn't slide until I gave it a real jerk ( I guess that discribes me). One loaf slid up against the back of the oven and the other flattened way out and I was sure they were goners.

One other thingwas that at the end of the 3 hours the dough had much more than doubled. It was sitting on my ice machine that supplies a little extra heat. I also tried to get some color on the loaves while still in the oven by spreading some b utter on the surface.

I'll try again with correcting what I can and take pictures of the different stages as suggeasted. I'm not much of a photographer and I'll have to figure out how to attach photos. These things don't come easily to an octogenerian.

Thanks again       Herb

 

photojess's picture
photojess

when you do the preferment, (which I have never done yet), and you say to add the other ingredients the next day, how long are we talking over night, by the time you start back up in the morning?

Is there a specific number of hours it should be in the fridge?

Thanks!

(Dan, I'm loving following the threads you're contributing to, as well as all of the other pros on here.  Continuously learning lots!)

Jess

photojess's picture
photojess

Your knowledge and time that you are sharing are much appreciated.  I am still a newbie except for basic breads, and more bread books will be in my future.

One thing about this vast site and in what other's share, is there is so much to read, and while a title might start out with one thing, the discussion may lean towards really good info about something else......I could spend hours on here at a time!

 

Thanks again. I think this is a recipe I'd like to try soon.

samsara's picture
samsara

On the basis of the interview, this recipe (which I screwed up pretty good but it still tasted delicious), my desire to actually know how I can make my own recipes and find out what the effect of doing different things does, and Dan's HUGE willingness to interact on here and help people out... I went ahead and finally clicked "Order".  I can't wait for it to come but I have round two of this dough in the fridge waiting to become my favorite bread.  I might have to buy another rosemary plant as my little one is getting hacked back pretty far and is going to have trouble keeping up with my desire to make this bread again and again :-)

 

Dave

 

SulaBlue's picture
SulaBlue

I have this book and I love it!

Admittedly, it's not a book you can really sit up late at night and read, at least not past the first few chapters. I fear the section on baker's math just made my eyes cross when I tried to read it the first time.

I really like the history in the first chapter, esp. mention of bread during wartime, etc. and wish there'd been a bit more of that kind of thing!

leemid's picture
leemid

I love this bread. I am making some right now. But I don't get the durations you say in the recipe.

I followed the recipe exactly and brought it with me to work this morning to keep an eye on it. The drive took about 40 minutes of the bulk fermentation which 'should' last 3 hours with the dough doubling. I folded it and expect to do so again but don't see two foldings, which with sourdough never increases to double in between the fold times, lasting out to 3 hours. I am not familiar with folding after the dough has doubled so this is new territory for me. I am an accomplished baker and know that the length of the bulk fermentation can/will vary markedly from baker to baker, location to location, flour to flour, and I will continue to make this bread however it works for me, but I was wondering if y'all get different timings?

I like to soak the chopped rosemary in the oil before adding to the dough for several hours as mentioned above to increase the flavor, and will eventually try the firm starter substitution for the recipe's preferment. I am using a cheap and not so wonderful olive oil, the economy being what it is and wondered if anyone has done so then switched to a good, fruity, non-bitter, high-quality oil, and is the result dramatically better?

Lee

FaithHope's picture
FaithHope

Floyd, real quick.  When you say you let it ferment for 3 hours and then did 2 folds, what does that mean?  Did you fold it after the 3 hours and then let it sit again, and then give it another fold, and let it rise one last time?  If so, how much time between each fold?

I'm sorry if that's a dumb question.  I just usually shape my dough after the 3 hours and then let them do their last rise, then bake.  Am I doing it wrong?

I'm going to try this R. Olive Oil after everyone finishes eating what I just made today! :)  Thanks for the pictures!  They look AWESOME!!!

Thanks too Dan for all your imput!  I want to go and get your book too!  I just have Peter R's BBA book and I really love it, but am looking for other great books too!  I love the round loaf pic.'s!!  AMAZING!!

Thanks,

Faith

cheesehappens's picture
cheesehappens

Thanks for the nice recipe. I embellished it with a heaping tablespoon of finely grated Meyer lemon peel and added a tad more flour to combat some stickiness. My two carefully snipped epis looked just about perfect after an hour's proofing. I followed the whole Peter Reinhart-prescribed steam routine and fully expected nice pointy epis, but instead, the points lost all definition and the leaves looked more like eggs. Tasted great, but looked kinda dumb. The epis were uncrowded on a heavy full-size sheet pan and I weighed all the ingredients. Anybody understand why the leaves turned to eggs? Thanks in advance.

fotomat1's picture
fotomat1

Thrilled that the formula lends itself well to sandwich loaves. Pretty much the same formula as Floyd starts off with which is actually Dan's but adjustment to the bake time. 2 10x5 USA pans...70 minute final rise....spray well before inserting to a 400 degree oven 50-55 minutes. Actually trying to convert a number of my favorites to sandwich loaves as a strange new year resolution. Thanks to Dan for this one and his wonderful book.