ROSEMARY 'N SUNDRIED TOMATO BREAD

This baby made it to the TOP 9 on Foodbuzz today, 31st May 2010. Happy Buzz Day ! Thank You to the Foodbuzz community :)

A thunderstorm lashed the sky, dense, grey sheets of rain pummelled the ground, the television went blank, the house morphed into dark, gloomy and small, the wind swept through gaping windows and quivering doors and a fine spray of rain caressed an arm with chilled drops......... a cold quiver settled inside of me and I could think of little else but Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, Heathcliff's unresolved passions and Mr. Rochester's brooding misery.... what did I do? I made bread. I should have made "lunatic mugs with smiling faces" ...but I made bread. Had it been a little colder I would have lit the fireplace, if I had one, or a wood oven if I had one too. Black thunderstorms are a haunting pleasure. I love them. When I'm happy.


I was.... so I made a rosemary infused bread embedded with flecks of sundried tomatoes baked to a crust on the outside, tender on the inside and entrenched with flavour all over. And I caught them all in the amber eye of a candle lit. Thunderstorms sometimes make my day.

The recipe ~

Based loosely on a baking book 'Home Baking' by Martha Day given to me as a birthday present by my children.

4 cups bread flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp instant yeast
1 T honey
 1 - 1 1/4 cup lukewarm water
1-2 T oil from the jar of sun dried tomatoes 
6-7 pieces of sun dried tomatoes, chopped
1 1/2 T chopped fresh rosemary

Sift flour into a large bowl. Add yeast and mix. Add the chopped rosemary and sundried tomatoes. Mix. Add salt and add 1 cup of lukewarm water and the rest of the liquid ingredients. Mix with a wooden spoon or on the electric mixer with the paddle attachment. Mix on slow and if necessary add more water. The dough should be soft and slightly sticky. Change the paddle attachment to the hook attachment and mix further OR turn out onto lightly floured board and knead by hand for at least 10 minutes until the dough is smooth and elastic. Flour your hands if the dough gets too sticky. Do not over flour.....it's always better to err on the sticky side. After kneading the dough should be smooth and much less sticky.


Shape the dough into a smooth ball and place in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with a damp cloth and allow to rest for an hour or until it doubles in bulk. Test with a poke of your finger and if the depression stays like a belly button without bouncing back its ready for the second kneading. 

Knead for another 5 minutes and let rise again until double in bulk. When risen shape into an 8 inch flattish round, score the top with a blade and let rise until double in bulk. 


Bake at 220 C for 10 minutes, take out, lightly dust some flour over and bake for another 20 minutes on 200 C. Take out from oven and test for doneness by tapping the underpart and it should sound hollow. 


Enjoy.....warm or with a bowl of creamy soup. 

Note : This bread can be made with only one rising. 

I am submitting this to Yeast Spotting.