rosemary

     Hello, everyone.  I'm Teketeke's son (Akiko), and this is my first time baking bread. I made rosemary bread.  This took me about 2 1/2 hours. Oops, one of my loaves didn't de-gas much. This recipe was from the Food Network.

 It tasted great, I loved it, but I had to add a lot of water though because the dough was tough.

                                                                                        Ingredients

                                                                          1/4 ounces of active dry yeast (I used 6g of active dry yeast)

                                                                         2 teaspoons of sugar

                                                                          2 tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil+ some more for brushing and serving

                                                                          2 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour

                                                                          2 tablespoons of dried rosemary

                                                                          1 teaspoon of fine salt

                                                                          1/2 teaspoons of kosher

                                                                          one gram of freshly ground pepper 

                                                                                   Method

                                             1.) Stir the yeast, sugar and 1/4 cup of warm water in a large bowl. Let it sit foamy, about 5 minutes.

                                             2.)Add 1 table spoon of olive oil, the flour, 1 ½ tablespoons of rosemary, the fine salt, and ¾ cup warm water, then stir until a dough forms

                                             3.) Put the dough on lightly floured surface and kneed adding water and flour if necessary, until smooth and elastic

                                             4.) Brush a large bowl with olive oil. Add the dough, cover bowl with plastic wrap and let it stand in room temperature until the dough rises 3 times its original height.

                                             5.) Brush 2 baking sheets with olive oil. Add the dough and spilt into 4 equal pieces. Shape each piece like a sphere. Then let the dough rise again until 2 times its size.

                                             6.) Preheat oven to 400 degrees. While waiting brush olive oil on the surface of the dough, then sprinkle with the kosher salt and ½ tablespoons of rosemary. Then bake in the oven for 20 minutes. Transfer the loaves to a rack to cool. Serve olive oil and the pepper.

                                                                    Enjoy!

Best wishes,

Hajime

I saw Floyd's posting on this recipe.  Wanted to try out.  I also saw some seeded recipes,  and wanted to add in the seeds. I need some advice here,  as the the bread turned out a little dense - see the crumb below.

Ingredients:
Preferment
125g All Purpose Flour 85g water 2.5g salt 2g yeast
Day 1:  Mix all and leave rise for 1 hour,  then refrigerate it overnight.
Final Dough
350g Bread Flour 225g water 40g extra virgin olive oil 5g rosemary leaves (I used dried) 7.5g salt 2.5g yeast All of the preferment
Seeds (I added these in as I wanted a seeded bread)
50g Sunflower seed  20g Sesame seeds
Bake sunflower seed for 15 minutes in oven at 150 degree celsius. Turn the seeds occasionally. Fry sesame seeds for about 5 minutes over fire.  Stir constantly till brown.  Put in a bowl and cover overnight.

Day 2:  Mix dough first,  and add in preferment,  knead well.  I added the seeds last after I've kneaded the dough well. Mix the dough and seeds well together. (Should I have waited after the 1st rise to add in the seeds?)
Rising/Proofing:  Rise for 1 1/2 hours, (Floyd suggest a 3 hour bulk rising with 2 folds,  which I should have followed).  1 fold and shape.  Proof for 1 1/2 hours. (The dough have doubled well,  my first rise should have been longer??)
Bake:  Steam the oven at 250 degrees celsius,  and  bake at 230 degrees celsius for 50 minutes,  and bring down the temperature to 200 degree celsius for 20 minutes.  (did I bake a little too long?)
Looking for some advice please?
Jenny

I have a problem. Admitting that you have a problem is the first step to recovery, right?

So here I am, 7 weeks after giving birth to a wonderful baby boy...and I have 12 loaves of bread in various stages of becoming tasty, crusty goodness.

I am not a professional. I do not have one of those nice ovens that will fit all this bread. I have no couche for the insanely wet rosemary potato bread other than the piece of thin natural linen that I picked up at the fabric store for half off. I have to bake loaves 3 at a time, part of the time on a half sheet pan, so that they all get done at the right times.

The smell wafting through my house, though...heaven. Really. The smell of bread baking makes up for the hours of hard work I've put in over the last 24 hours.

Really, the hardest part was making the dough last night. My husband works second shift, meaning he's gone from about 2:30 until about midnight, so during the time I was mixing up doughs I had both kids to take care of, some laundry to do, dishes to keep up with, and dinner to make for Rinoa and I. Not only did I get everything done, but I figured I'd have time to do not only the baked potato and rosemary potato breads that I planned to take to Christmas as gifts, but also a loaf or two of real gingerbread to have with lightly sweetened whipped cream.

I think I've renewed my confidence in my ability to successfully multitask. I quit baking while I was pregnant because I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to spend enough time with my daughter after having the new baby and that she'd be forever scarred by my inability to play with her constantly. I can't believe I thought that now, but pregnancy does strange things to you. I now know that I can do my baking, which is something I do for myself as much as to provide my family with the best food possible, and still not neglect my family.

I have to admit that this crazy baking spree was most likely not the best way to reacquiant myself with my rational mind.

I'll share pictures when I'm done. Just thought I'd share my brain today. :)

I saw a post here on The Fresh Loaf  by someone looking for a formula for a Lemon Rosemary bread.  This combination sounded really good to me so I decided to give it a try.  First I had to decided how much Lemon Zest and Rosemary to put into the bread and I decided to try for about 2% for each of them.  Then I decided that I would use up the last of my bread flour and use some fresh milled whole wheat and rye.  I figured on a hydration of 70% and that the percentage of the sourdough preferment would be 20%.  It is summer time here and the temperatures have been hot so I figured less preferment would slow things down a little bit.  I now had a plan on how I was going to make this bread now I'll tell you how it went.

 The first night I made my first build of the preferment.

 The next morning I add more flour and water to the preferment for the 2nd build.

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!!

Last night we had some mashed potatoes.  I had just read the BBA pugliese formula recently, and thought that I would make it with some of the leftovers.  Well, as it happens, I found the Potato Rosemary bread on my way to the pugliese, and it also contains mashed potatoes!  Then I saw that the general formula for the biga makes enough for both the pugliese and the potato rosemary breads.  And then I discovered that my leftover potatoes weighed EXACTLY as much as the amounts called for in the two recipes.  A sign from the universe, perhaps?  So I made the biga last night and started today with the potato rosemary bread.

This is wonderful bread.  I used fresh rosemary from a plant in my driveway (I have to container garden, bc our lot, although large, is too sloped and shady to grow much of anything in a garden sense).  I used plain, seasoned leftover mashed russet potatoes from dinner.  The only thing I did differently from the formula as written was to omit the garlic, because my husband had an opinion about that.  Also, my mashed potatoes must have been on the moist side, because I had to add a little more flour and knead a little longer to get the "tacky but not sticky" texture as described in the book.  I slashed it with a wet knife, rather than trying the lame again (I am so lame with the lame).  It worked well--the best slash was the one I went over twice.

It's soft yet chewy, light yet meaty.  It would make a fantastic ham or turkey sandwich, an idea I'm going to explore tomorrow at lunch.  The cracked pepper and rosemary give it a little bite, but aren't overpowering. I will definitely bake this bread again.

This is Rosemary Olive Oil Sourdough from Nancy Silverton's book. I used the starter that I have been growing since Feb - my first one (not Nancy's formula) and I have to say I am proud of this little starter! Oven spring!

I tried the La Cloche top on a preheated stone for 20 minutes. I sprayed the top of the loaf and the inside of the La Cloche top when I put it in and boy did it get crispy!

It came out great! Moist with a nice light sourdough taste, I even think next time I would use slightly less Rosemary than the recipe called for because it is just a bit overpowering to the delicate sour taste.

My slashing technique needs help!