Rosemary & Roasted Garlic Bread

Why Make this Bread?

• With only about 5 minutes of active work, this is the easiest bread recipe you will find!
• This no-knead bread is a great way to introduce yeast baking as a starting point. There’s no guess work on how long to work the bread or proofing times.
• This rosemary garlic bread is a great make-ahead option. You can let it rest for a few hours or a few days, whatever is convenient for your schedule!
• Roasting the garlic with a bit of fresh rosemary brings lots of flavor to the bread.

Ingredients

This simple bread only needs 7 ingredients – seriously – just 7 ingredients for this crazy flavorful roasted garlic and rosemary bread.

• Bread flour. I recommend bread flour for this recipe, not all-purpose, for a better crust texture.
• Active dry yeast. Find this in your baking aisle at the grocery store. They come in little square envelopes, and we need 1 envelope for this recipe. (Pro tip: you can store the remaining yeast in the freezer to keep it fresher longer)
• Warm water. We need water between 90° – 105°F (32° – 40°C) for happy yeast. Any hotter can kill the yeast and stop the bread from rising.
• Fresh rosemary. I prefer to use fresh rosemary over dried in baked goods. Dried can be a little sharp (literally!)
• Whole garlic bulb. A whole bulb of garlic is needed when roasting because we will keep the cloves nestled in the bulb
• Olive Oil. For roasting the garlic.
• Kosher salt. Better for bread than iodized salt.

About Roasted Garlic

Roasting garlic changes so much about the flavor of the garlic. When raw, garlic can be a little sharp and overpowering. But once it’s roasted to a golden brown, the flavor becomes more mellow, sweeter and richer.

When looking for a bulb of garlic to roast, look for one that does not have brown or mushy spots and avoid bulbs that are already sprouting.

Pull off a few of the outer layers of the skin of the bulb, but you want the whole bulb to stay together, so don’t get too overly excited.

Next, slice off the top of the root-side, or larger-side of the bulb. You want to just expose the tops of the cloves.

Drizzle the top of the garlic with a generous glug of olive oil and place a spring of rosemary and some salt on top.

Next, we will bake at a high heat either covered in a small lidded pot or wrapped in aluminum foil until the cloves are golden brown and starting to pop away from the skin. This is how you know you’ve reached optimum roasted garlic deliciousness.

Tips for Making a Yeasted Bread

I mentioned this rosemary bread is a great beginner’s bread and I meant it! We will use yeast but we are keeping it very low key in the effort game here. If you’ve never worked with yeast before, here are a few helpful hints.

Yeast is a living thing. It’s a little strange when you think about it, but yeast is alive. Dried yeast is dormant, but adding a little warm water to the yeast will perk her right up!

Yeast can be temperamental. Because it is alive, we need to treat the yeast with respect. The water temperature is key (too hot and it can kill the yeast, but cold water will not wake up the dried yeast). Yeast also hates salt, so avoid dumping the salt directly on the yeast. Once everything is stirred into the flour, there’s enough buffer than it’s a-ok.

Yeast creates the rise. Yeast will chomp away at the sugars in the bread dough and release gases as it goes. Those gases are what creates the air bubbles and rise of the dough.

The fridge slows it down. In this recipe, we keep the dough at room temperature for 2 hours so the dried yeast can wake up and start to go to work. Then, we can place the dough in the fridge to slow down that hungry yeast. It will still keep chomping, but at a much slower rate so the flavor has a chance to build.

A Dutch oven is key. Because we are taking a shortcut on the kneading of the dough, we need a super hot Dutch oven to create the spring in the bread and provide a perfectly crusty exterior.