Insane-Amount-Of-Garlic Bread

After the craziness of the festive season, it's good to get back into the bread baking saddle. Not that I was entirely out of the kitchen as the holidays are a wonderful time to cook great food. And it was a leftover from that cooking that provided the inspiration - a head and a half of roasted garlic...

Now, I adore garlic, so yes, I decided to make a loaf of bread with that much garlic in it... Not that the neighbours will be thanking me, I'm sure... I kept the bake simple in order to showcase the garlic.

Poolish:

100g bread flour

100g water

pinch yeast

Dough:

All of the poolish plus...

350g bread flour

140g tepid water

60g oil (I use plain rape seed oil)

9g salt

2g dried active yeast

1 1/2 heads of roast garlic, roughly chopped

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 teaspoon fresh rosemary

Method:

I made up the poolish the night before and left it for around 10 hours. The yeast and the herbs went into the warm water - one to activate the yeast and two to soften the dried herbs. Left that for around 10 mins, after which I proceeded to make my bread as usual. Once the dough was combined, I kneaded it for 15 mins before popping the bowl in a bag and leaving. I did two stretch & folds during the bulk ferment, which took around 4 hours at room temperature. Following on, I knocked the dough back, shaped it and dropped it into a banneton and plastic bag to prove. That took around an hour, after which it went into the chicken brick. Cooking time was standard for a loaf of this size - 25 mins at 230C with the lid on, then 20 mins at 200C with the lid off. Loaf was cooled on a wire rack.

Verdict:

The baked loaf didn't smell as garlic-y as the raw dough did, but it smelled wonderful. The crust was nice and crisp and the bread bloomed well in the oven. In terms of taste, yes, it's garlic LOL, but not overly powerful, considering the amount that went into a fairly small loaf. It's very nice with butter, just as a snack, but would also be good dunked into a spag bol or something of that ilk... It tastes surprisingly savoury.

In terms of improvements, I could probably add more herbs - they seemed to get a wee bit lost in terms of the overall flavour, or else I could leave them out entirely. A sprinkling of sea salt on the loaf before putting it into the oven might be nice. I think I could also up the hydration by at least another 5 to 10% to make it more like proper Italian bread - the crumb was a little denser than I would have liked, though still perfectly acceptable. Would I do this again? Very definitely :-)