Hi all.

I'm getting ready to make a Rosemary Olive Sourdough and I'm trying to figure out the best way to handle the Rosemary part. I bought a small plant for the windowsill and would love to use it fresh, but there's a chance I will end up making these 12 loaves at a time, and I don't think the plant would give me enough. Will dried Rosemary give me the same results? What's the best way to incorporate the dried herb? Do I need to rehydrate it somehow first?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Stephan

I've been out of action for a while because my MacBook crash,  I couldn't manage my photos without my Mac,  and therefore have been busy baking, cooking,  taking pictures but not updating.

I just got back to Shanghai from Chinese New Year Holiday.  With another 2 days before work starts,  I have time on my hand to bake.  My son requested for his all time favorite - Olive Bread.  I decided to go with Daniel Leader's Local Bread - Fresh Herb Twist Recipe.  I like it because its simple,  yet,  the taste is good.  I've baked this bread twice before,  with dried herbs and with fresh herbs.  We decided the dried herbs taste better.  The taste of the fresh herbs was over empowering the bread taste.

This time,  I doubled the recipe so that I can make one with Herb and another one with Olives.

It is indeed,  1 dough,  2 flavours - For the Herb Bread,  I split into 2 dough and did a twist,  For the Olive Bread,  I kept it in a Brotform.  Each of the Bread weights about 920g.

I did notice that somehow,  with this bread,  according to the book,  I baked it at 220-230 degrees celsius,  425 F,  40 minutes,  somehow,  the lower part of the bread remains a little more most.  Why is that so?  

A few things that has been going through my mind as I cut the bread:  I've got my baking stone,  heated up properly.  Perhaps the temperature is not hot enough?  I've baked 10 minutes longer than the required time of 30 minutes,  timing should be alright.....

Well, any advice will be appreciated.

www.foodforthoughts.jlohcook.com

Thanks to TFL, my loaves taste great and look attractive too. Yesterday a family with 4 kids came for dinner-I pointed out to the toddlers the loaves proofing on the hood of my car in the driveway (why turn on the warming drawer when it's 85f outside?).  A while later, I showed them my slashing technique, then the loaf expansion while baking.  They watched as the loaves came out of the oven onto the cooling rack and felt the high heat radiating off the bread.  During the early courses of the meal, they kept trying to escape from the table to visit the loaves.  Finally, I had them hold the bread basket as I sliced it.  THeir assignment was to deliver the full basket to all the diners, but it seemed to stall at their seat.  How gratifying it is to have all the guests enjoy the bread and ask for more.  And the bonus prize: the teenager was enthusiastic about the remaining loaf I sent home with his family:>)

French Thyme (.5t) is the odd common denominator of my most successful loaves.  I can't even taste it. Is it my imagination, or does it improve the crumb and oven spring of the SD bread? The bread was eaten so eagerly, I forgot to photograph it!

EvaGal

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.

The recipe is from http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Jos-Rosemary-Bread/Detail.aspx. (Here is a photo of the crumb)

The recipe is from http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Jos-Rosemary-Bread/Detail.aspx.

Spring has sprung and so has the Allium ursinum or Bear garlic, known in my woods as Bärlauch.

German: http://www.uni-graz.at/~katzer/germ/Alli_urs.html

English: http://www.uni-graz.at/~katzer/engl/Alli_urs.html

I have two containers of freshly plucked leaves gathered from the forest floor (before the storm hit us) and don't quite know where to start.....

This weekend I made the Fresh Herb Twist from Daniel Leader's Local Breads. It uses 3 fresh herbs — thyme and rosemary (from my garden) and basil. It was delicious with my beef vegetable stew!

Fresh Herb Twist

There were a couple of requests for this recipe when I posted a picture previously. Sorry it took me so long to post this recipe. This recipe turned out very well. I just need to find the time to make them again. I'm trying to insert a picture, but I don't have much luck doing that on this forum. The picture is somewhere on this forum.

1 t. yeast

1/2 t. sugar

3 1/4 cups all purpose flour

1 1/4 cups lukewarm water

1 1/2 t. salt

3 TB Olive oil

2 t. (total) mixed herbs (resemary, oregano, basil - or blended Italian herbs)