rosemary bread: an ongoing story

I am obsessed with bread. Slowly yet steadily, and with many lumpy first attempts, baking will yeild its secrets to me, and I will become the greatest baker in Japan create the bread of nationalism yes. The rosemary bread recipe I’ve used in the past is based off of this, but someday soon I hope to attempt this un-kneaded madness.

You will need:

• 1 cup warm (c. 110-115 degrees F) water
• 1 1/2 Tbs olive oil; also some more olive oil later
• 1 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp oregano
• 1/4 tsp ground black pepper
• 1 Tbs dried rosemary (fresh is fine too; just use a bit more)
• 2 1/2 cups bread (or all-purpose) flour
• 1 1/2 tps (aka one packet)

So, a word about yeast. It comes in two principle kinds, ‘active dry’ and ‘instant’/'rapid rise.’ There is also non-dried (’live’) yeast, which is creepy, and … some other denominations that are confusing, but you probably only have to care about those. If you bake bread lots, you might want to get yeast in a jar which you keep in the fridge and measure 1 1/2 tsp out of whenever you want, instead of going through tons of those packets. Active dry yeast needs to be proofed to start it making delicious bubbles – that is, mixed with some warm water and let to sit for 5-10min until it turns creamy and foamy and starts smelling like, well, yeast. “Warm water” here means ~100-115 degrees F, or, according to the ancient lore of my mother, the temperature of ‘baby’s bathwater’ – also according to ancient lore, this temperature is defined as “feels nice and warm on the inside of your wrist but just shy of scalding” – a useful trick if you are like me and never have a thermometer.

Instant/rapid rise yeast, however, should not be proofed! If you do, because it rises so very rapidly, all the bubble-making potential will likely get used up during the proofing process before it even meets the flour and you will have dense, sad bread. (This happened to me last time. The Bronx does not appear to sell regular yeast, alas.) If you have instant yeast, just toss it in with the other dry ingredients. Also, with instant yeast, you don’t usually want to give it two long rises. A regular pattern for non-quick bread might be: knead, rise 1 hour or till double size, punch down and knead, another hour rise, punch down and shape or put in pan, 20min / while the oven is heating rise. So with instant yeast you would only do one hour-long rise, then punch down, knead, shape, and let rise only another 20min before baking. But the rest of this recipe will assume you have regular old active dry yeast.

ANYWAY. So take 1/4 c of your water and add the active dry yeast, stir till dissolved, and let sit about 7 min. If it gets frothy and creamy in this time you are good to go.

Meanwhile, sift together (read, for me: stir with a fork or pastry blender) flour, sugar, salt, and stir in about 1.5 Tbs olive oil in a big bowl. The original recipe called for 3 Tbs olive oil which is way too moist and dense in my opinion; 1.5 seems to about do it, but it’s a matter of taste. You can substitute whole wheat flour for healthier bread, but I wouldn’t substitute more than a cup at the most, otherwise (again) it gets to dense, since whole wheat is inevitably heavier. If you’re using all-purpose flour instead of bread flour a half-cup of wheat to 2 cups of white flour is a nice balance.

Add yeast mixture, the rest of the water (warm!), and stir till it’s more or less coagulated. It will be a mess, however. This is the sign that you need to stick your hands in it.

Skip this paragraph if you already know how to knead things. But because some of you were asking about it: first, flour your board / counter-top. A nice way to do this is sort of tossing flour across the surface. The dough will start out sticky and falling apart. Do not worry about this; dust your hands in some flour and accept that you will make a mess of yourself and your counter (aprons are good at this point, though). At first worry about getting it all in a ball, but then you’re basically folding the dough-lump in half, squashing it away from you with the heels of your hands, folding it in half the OTHER way, and repeating. The kneading is to build up strands of gluten which make the bread tasty and nutritious, give it an even crumb (aka a cross-section with lots of little holes), and help it be springy and resilient, so as you knead, the dough will start to feel less goopy and uncohered, and smoother and easier to handle. There is a danger in over-kneading, however, because it will make the dough too tough, so you want to quit when the dough starts feeling good. In most cases each kneading will go for 5-10min, at which point your forearms may be sad, but remember that it’s all in the name of science.

So knead the dough for a minute, then add the oregano, pepper, and rosemary, and continue kneading for another 5min or so. Kneading the herbs in instead of mixing them in with the dry ingredients can be a pain, but 1. it’s also kind of fun, and 2. sometimes it makes nice swirly patterns of herbs in the final product. Studies show, however, that you could have just throw them in when you sifted the dry ingredients and it wouldn’t hurt.

Shape the dough into a round, put in a greased (with that olive oil, ideally) bowl in a warm, dark place, cover it, and let it rise for an hour or until doubled in size.

Punch down, knead another c.5min, shape again, re-cover and put it back in that warm, dark place for another hour.

After an hour, start preheating your oven for 400F. At this point you must ask yourself two questions: 1. How much do I care about “oven lift”? and 2. Do I own a clean spray-bottle full of water? Oven spring is how much the bread puffs up in the oven, especially at first, and one way to encourage it is by putting the bread into a humid and extra-hot oven for the first few minutes. The easiest way of doing that is the noble spray bottle (also the most fun way). Another option is to dig out an oven-proof bowl, fill it at least 2/3 with water, and stick it in before you start heating the oven. Make sure you put it in when the oven is cold to prevent shattered glass (if you’re usuing pyrex) or other disaster!

Take your dough again and shape it however you want. For this recipe, I usually form it into a round or two smaller ones. If you’re doing that, make sure to tuck the edges under and pinch them together to make a smooth, unbroken top to the round. It will come out somewhat boule-like. It’s also nice to slice the top at this point. Take your sharpest knife or a razor blade if you have one around and make a couple parallel long, shallow, swift cuts across the top. This took me a long time to get down, because you can’t make them too deep, but you want them to go across the entirety of the bread or they won’t sort of swell outward and look delicious. Also you really do have to go fast or it won’t work.

Let your bread rise for another c. 20min while the oven is pre-heating, then slide it in. When you put the bread in, if you’re taking the spray-bottle approach, have that at the ready and squirt it furiously into the hot oven (this makes a good noise) before slamming the door shut. Wait about 10min, then turn the heat down to 375 and, if you went that route, take out the bowl of hot water (caution: REALLY disastrously hot). Let bake another c. 20min or until nice and brown.

Take the bread out and brush top with olive oil (or butter, if you’re a wuss) while still hot, then sprinkle with coarse sea salt for more ‘tastes like Macaroni Grill’ points.

Et voila! This bread is pretty dense and moist, but very flavorful, too. I make it when I want something more show-off-y than a regular baguette.

This account of it is long only because I included all the bread-making trivia one might want – it is actually not any more complicated than most bread. The original recipe, you may note, is for a bread machine, so I had to extrapolate the process, but armed with general bread-making knowledge you can make anything you’d like by hand.