I just realized I haven't posted on this blog for a very (!) long time. My jet-setting life has prevented me from doing some serious blog posts, so here's a short one. I bought some awesome deli meats from Goose the Market in Indianapolis, IN (official website, yelp review) on my latest escapade. I picked up some very soft baguette in the Italian Market area of Philly, but I made sandwiches with all of those. I came home staring at the deli meat and realized I had no more bread to make sandwiches with! While the fruit-and-meat plate (no cheese, because I don't want to be suffering all the time) idea is always classy, sometimes a little grain goes a long way in the stomach. I wanted to buy some focaccia for the sandwich, but then the cold weather made a total wimp out of me and grounded me at home. I looked for a recipe online and found this, which was simple enough.
I did use dried rosemary instead of fresh because I don't have fresh ones on hand (and did you miss the part where the weather kicked me in the groin real hard so I was staying in to lick my wounds?). Also, since I don't have all night to wait for the bread to rise twice, I split the rising between 2 different days. I kept the dough in the fridge in between so that it doesn't ferment (and the mice won't get to it). I suspect that the original recipe asks for fresh spices for a practical reason (and a slightly food-snobbery reason)-- dried-up leaves and twigs tend to catch on fire easily. Since I let the dough sit for over 20-some hours, the dried rosemary should have a little bit of time to hydrate, saving us from having Smokey the Bear coming out of the oven.
Here're two shots of the finished product:
Close-up shot of the grains. Bun height is low because I didn't have enough dough and probably didn't let it rise for longer (I did leave it out for at least 3 hours, but the dough was cold so go figure). I do like the slightly denser texture of the bread though, so letting the dough rise longer may not be an option.
Top-down shot. My hungry self already trimmed the end to " test the product out" by dipping them into high quality extra virgin olive oil (thanks Mariana and Domingos for bringing me the highest quality olive oil back from Portugal!). The dimples on top are very nice. For some reason, my oven won't brown the top of my bread. I took matters into my own hand-- I used the broiler to achieve the "oven-fresh" look. Without that, my bread looks like a stereotypical computer science geek's skin color-- white-washed.
When I baked the bread, I started smelling the rosemary around like 16 minutes in, which lead me to believe that my rosemary hydration therapy worked (look for that in your local pharmacy's skin care aisle!).
I'm very happy with the way this comes up except the height issue. I did not document how I make this bread because... I don't want my phone to have dough on it... Now I just need to try this with the fancy deli meats.
Bon appetit!
I did use dried rosemary instead of fresh because I don't have fresh ones on hand (and did you miss the part where the weather kicked me in the groin real hard so I was staying in to lick my wounds?). Also, since I don't have all night to wait for the bread to rise twice, I split the rising between 2 different days. I kept the dough in the fridge in between so that it doesn't ferment (and the mice won't get to it). I suspect that the original recipe asks for fresh spices for a practical reason (and a slightly food-snobbery reason)-- dried-up leaves and twigs tend to catch on fire easily. Since I let the dough sit for over 20-some hours, the dried rosemary should have a little bit of time to hydrate, saving us from having Smokey the Bear coming out of the oven.
Here're two shots of the finished product:
When I baked the bread, I started smelling the rosemary around like 16 minutes in, which lead me to believe that my rosemary hydration therapy worked (look for that in your local pharmacy's skin care aisle!).
I'm very happy with the way this comes up except the height issue. I did not document how I make this bread because... I don't want my phone to have dough on it... Now I just need to try this with the fancy deli meats.
Bon appetit!
