Garlic Rosemary Bread

A Simple Bread Recipe That is Baked in a Dutch Oven.

Can one live on only bread dipped in olive oil and balsamic? If anyone out there is doing a scientific study on this, I'd like to sign up!  Bread and butter, sandwiches, french toast, paninis, you name it---  I love bread. 

I've been baking for a long time now, and I have NEVER made more than a banana bread.  I don't really know why, but something about using yeast and having to knead are intimidating to me.  I know that it really is not that scary or hard, but I have always stayed away. 



Big shoutout to one of the besties, Katy, and her boyfriend Kyle for making me this cute sign! Visit their Etsy shop here.

I knew for my first bread recipe I wanted something simple... something I could use as a good base to experiment with flavors rather than with techniques.  I settled on this recipe for crusty bread specifically because it seemed easy enough and because the bread is baked in a Dutch oven. My mom got be a beautiful Dutch oven for Christmas and I've been cooking all I can in it.  I don't know how I survived without one for so long!

Another aspect that drew me to this recipe was that it used rapid-rise or instant yeast.  It seemed less intimidating to just throw it in the dry mix rather than activating or allowing it to bloom.

I chose to skip right over the plain crusty loaf and dive right into a flavored bread.  Rosemary was an obvious choice for me. I decided midway through that I was going to add some chopped garlic... this explains why you see no garlic in my ingredients photo. If my man had his way, it would include 50 whole garlic cloves!  Perhaps one day I will indulge him in a super garlicky loaf, but not today.  I ALMOST backed out of that flavor because my grocery store did not have any fresh rosemary and I have yet to start my herb garden at the new house.  By then, I was already craving this flavor combination, so I decided to use dried.  It came out fine, but next time I will try to track down some fresh rosemary. 

 

Today I realized one of the most difficult parts of bread making is waiting for the bread to rise!  12-18 hours for this one.  So I started the dough on Saturday night, baked it in Sunday afternoon, and built grilled sandwiches on it for dinner on Sunday night.  This recipe was so simple I can actually see myself baking a loaf once a week!  Garlic and cheeses and herbs, oh my!  The possibilities are endless.




I love the oven light in this photo.  It is beckoning the dutch oven to follow the light....

 

Nice and crusty.

 

Tomorrow night will definitely be panini and soup night!

Garlic Rosemary Bread

Adapted from a recipe from Simply So Good

3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 3/4 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp dry instant or rapid-rise yeast
3 tsp dried rosemary--- if I was using fresh rosemary (which I would have preferred), I would throw in a good handful
2 tbsp garlic, chopped
1 1/2 cups water

Combine flour, yeast, salt, rosemary and garlic in a large bowl.  Add water and stir with a spatula until combined.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and leave it on the counter to rise for 12-18 hours.  Do not skip this step, and do not refrigerate the dough. 

After the rise, preheat your oven to 450 degrees   Place your Dutch oven with the lid on into the hot oven and allow it to preheat for 30 minutes. 

As soon as you get the pot in the oven, turn your dough out onto a heavily floured surface.  It will be very sticky, so flour your hands too.  Form the dough into a round ball, lightly cover with plastic and let it rest while the Dutch oven preheats. 

After 30 minutes, remove the pot from the oven and carefully place your dough into it.  There is no need to spray the pot with nonstick spray.  The bread did not stick to my enamel coated pot. Flouring your hands will make this part easier.  The dough is sticky!

Place the lid on your pot and return it to the oven.  Bake for 30 minutes and then remove the lid and bake for 15 minutes more.  Carefully remove the bread from the pot and cool on a wire rack. 

Enjoy!