This crisp-crusted, golden rosemary sourdough bread is interspersed with hearty, fragrant herbs, and is great with a smear of butter, or a dab of jam. Adapted from Judith Fertig's wonderful 200 Fast and Easy Artisan Breads, a book every bread baker should have. This post contains affiliate links – thank you for supporting the brands that help make this blog possible.
There is a reason we associate bread with comfort. The smell that wafts through our homes when fresh bread is laid on the table, the warmth of a working oven, the crackling of a well-crisped crust, and the bountiful shape of a loaf all speak to our senses, promising treasures and pleasures beyond the humble union of flour, water, and wild yeast.
Its ability to fill us, to satiate that deep hole in our bellies that has been worn by time, the demands of modern life, and bottled up emotions are incomparable.
As much as I love salads, rice, roasted vegetables, and even the humble potato, few things speak to my soul as much as freshly baked rosemary sourdough bread.
The art of sourdough bread baking
I love delving into sourdough bread making. It started with my journey to find the perfect starter (with help from Peter Reinhart and Tartine Bakery). Then continued to finding ways to shape, proof and score the perfect loaf. And finally, culminated with my attempts to orchestrate the perfect oven bread baking environment.
Though frustrating at times, all of it was a form of meditation.
I do not remember anyone in my family ever baking bread. Even my industrious grandmother Berta, who grew up on a semi-urban farm during war times and provided much of the family’s food, has abandoned that pursuit when technology and money improved.
I can only assume my grandparents did not see the pleasures and benefits of bread-baking like I did.
To them, I imagine the pursuit of bread-baking seemed a wasteful drudgery, a labour from which even the Bolshevik revolution couldn’t emancipate them quickly enough.
To me, it’s a fanciful way of reconnecting to something earthen, pure, and of course, healthy.
The meditative impact of bread baking
In these days of stress, I return to bread baking. When the demands of the world seem to multiply, while the temperatures continue to drop, and melancholy, exhaustion and a deep, deep hunger threaten to pummel me, I mix water, flour, and a bit of sourdough starter in order to create magic.
I give of myself to this mixture, shake it into a loaf of rosemary sourdough bread, and I hope it will be give back in sustenance and nutrients.
Falling in love with Italian rosemary sourdough bread
Having documented my initial experiments with sourdough, I have been feeling confident enough to try a different bread recipe. I turned to a seemingly simple book, Judith Fertig's 200 Fast and Easy Artisan Breads. And the results were truly more than the cover would have suggested, though I did have to tinker with it just a bit to produce a rosemary sourdough bread.
This crisp-crusted, golden rosemary sourdough loaf is interspersed with strands of hearty rosemary, one of the only herbs that seems as at home in the bleak landscape of Winnipeg’s winter as it does in the desert heat of the Israeli summer.
It slices beautifully, serving as a resting pad for a smear of butter, a dab of jam, or a whole sandwich. And it comforts me.
And right now, that’s the best part about it.
Note: for best results, bake this Italian rosemary sourdough bread on a pizza stone.
Golden Italian rosemary sourdough bread
Ingredients
- 2 cups unbleached all-purpose or bread flour plus more for dusting (if you're using non-Canadian flour, Fertig's recipe calls for an additional ¼ cup)
- ½ cup whole-grain flour
- ½ tablespoon fine kosher salt
- 1- 1.25 cups room-temperature water start with one cup and add up to another quarter depending on dryness of dough. You don't want a dough that is too dry
- 1 cup prepared and fed sourdough starter instructions on how to prepare your starter in recipe body
- 3 stalks of fresh rosemary or about ⅛ of a cup
- ¼ cup cornmeal or polenta
- AP flour for dusting
- a tablespoon of olive oil
- 2 cups hot water for broiler pan
Instructions
- Two nights before you're planning to bake your bread, revive your starter: remove starter from fridge and let come to room temperature. Stir the starter well to recombine any liquid that may have gathered on the top. Measure out 1 cup of starter.
- Place 1 cup starter in a large jar, bowl, or container, add 1 cup of water and 1 ½ cups of flour and mix until combined. The mixture will be lumpy, like pancake batter. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and keep at room temperature (I keep my starter on top of the fridge) overnight.
- Refresh it once more in the morning with 65 grams of water and 50 grams of flour, and once again that night. The starter will be ready to use at night, or the next morning, when it bubbles and smells yeasty.
- You will need 1 cup of refreshed starter.
- When ready to bake, chop rosemary finely. Dump the bread flour and whole-grain flour into a mixing bowl, and stir with a wooden spoon to combine well. Add salt and chopped rosemary, and stir to combine.
- Pour in the water and starter and stir together until just moistened. Beat 40 strokes, scraping the bottom and the sides of the bowl, until the dough forms a thick, spongy mass.
- Transfer dough to an oiled crockpot or an oiled large glass bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a large plate and let ferment at room temperature 72°F (22 °C) for 12 to 24 hours, or until the dough is bubbly on the surface, has a sponge-like appearance and has either doubled or risen by half. I place my bowl, covered, in a oven that is turned off, or simply under the table in the kitchen.
- Use right away or place the bowl, covered with plastic wrap, in the refrigerator for up to three days.
- When dough is ready, place it on a generously floured surface and dust with more flour. Flour your hands. Using a dough scraper or floured hands, scrape the dough up and over itself, flouring and turning it as you go, for 12 to 15 turns, or until dough is soft and not sticky (this method is fantastic, and the dough is not overworked). Dust very lightly with flour.
- With floured hands, work the dough as little as possible and form it into a wide 10-12 inch batard. Pinch the ends and all seams closed, and lightly flour sticky spots. The dough should be smooth and soft, and not sticky. If sticky, add a bit more flour.
- Prepare a baking sheet or cutting board (the bottom must be flat). Line it with a clean kitchen cloth, or parchment paper, and dust it with flour. Without moving your batard too much, use a dough scraper (or well-floured hands) to slide your dough onto the floured surface.
- Cover the dough with plastic wrap sprayed with oil, oily side down. Let rest at room temperature (again, I use a turned-off oven) for 5 to 8 hours.
- About 30 minutes before baking, place a broiler pan on the bottom rack of the oven. Place your baking sheet on in the middle of the oven. Preheat oven to 450F.
- Remove plastic wrap from batard. Using a sharp knife, make three to five crosshatch slashes diagonally across the top of the loaf.
- Very carefully and wearing oven mitts, remove the hot baking sheet from the oven, and cover with parchment paper. Sprinkle the cornmeal on the paper. Using the dough scraper and well-floured hands, slide the bread from the pan onto the baking sheet, taking care to keep its shape. Place baking sheet back in the middle rack of the oven.
- Pull lower rack of the oven halfway out, and pour 2 cups of hot water into the broiler pan. Spray batard with water, but take care not to drench it. Return rack into the oven, and close oven door immediately.
- Bake for 27 to 30 minutes, lightly spraying the loaf with water three times during baking. The bread will be ready when crust is golden-brown. Remove baking sheet from the oven, and, wearing kitchen gloves, remove bread onto wire rack to cool.
There's nothing like a warm slice of bread with butter. I cannot wait to make this. Hopefully, I don't finish the loaf in 1 weekend. Enjoy a restful weekend, Ksenia 🙂
Haha, thank you Lee!
hi there, your recipe looks interesting! i am currently using a very active sourdough starter so i think i can ignore your "refreshing the starter" steps except i don't want the hydration to be off. but i'm confused: why do you feed the starter less water and more flour the first time and then more water and less flour the second time? my starter is 100% hydration (ratio of 1:1:1 starter/flour/water). can i just use that? what hydration is your starter supposed to be? once i know that, i can make the recipe.
also, just a suggestion: it would be easier for people if you standardized it to use cups or grams instead of switching between the two.
Hi Carol! Sorry for taking some time to get back to you, I was away for a music festival with limited-to-none internet access.
The starter refresher instructions are based on Judith Fertig's original recipe, and they're meant for a more liquidy levain (which mine was at the time). If your starter is properly refreshed, feel free to skip to stage 4!
And good point about the measurements. I thought I stuck to cups in this recipe though? I'll definitely review!
My wife said "Now that's bread!" . It's nice to get her approval. I didn't use the cornmeal on the parchment on the baking sheet. I just left the loaf on the parchment I used for the second rise and pulled it onto the baking sheet. I was scared I would deform the dough. It turned out very good.
I know, I always have that moment of intense fear before transferring sourdough from one surface to another! Glad it worked, and that your wife approved - I'm always happy to contribute to domestic bliss 🙂
I only wish you had posted the recipe and instructions without so much chit chat.
It's hard to understand what starter I'm suppose to use in the bread recipe.
The one I started with or make a new starter from the cup I take out of the orginal starter.
If you must put in remarks about chef Who'zit does it that way but you do this way....put it
in notes at the bottom. Just give me a simple step 1. step 2. step 3. recipe.
If, and it's hard for people that have a difficulties with written instructions, I am right you
end up with two batches of starter in the fridge?
I've tried editing out the "extra" stuff but am still not sure how to proceed.
If you were doing this on a video, again it's a written instructions issue with some of us, it would be easy to
see what you were doing even with the chit chat.
It sounds really good though.
Hello Nancy, I agree that the first instruction may be a bit convoluted (though I wouldn't call it 'chit chat'...). I am simply trying to be thorough for people who are new to sourdough.
The goal is to produce 1 cup of refreshed sourdough for this recipe; what you do with the rest of your starter batter is your choice, but yes, you would end up with two batches - one that you will use immediately in this recipe, and one that you can continue feeding or use in another sourdough recipe.
I an tinker around with that instruction in the hopes of making it clearer.
Let me know if you have any more questions.
Hi!! I am so pleased to have found this recipe:) My parents come to town and want to rush off to the Farmer's Market to grab a few loaves of Rosemary Ciabatta before it's all gone and I am hoping to make this for them as a surprise. I've already attempted it once and it was quite dense so I'm not sure where I messed up? Maybe on the second rise..
Anyway, I am trying it again so wish me luck! Thank you for the recipe!!
Hi Tiffany! Actually this was the least dense homemade sourdough bread that I've ever baked… So I'm really not sure what could've been the issue. Sometimes it's just the starter that you're working with not being active enough, and sometimes we just cut corners and don't wait enough for the bread to rise (I know I do sometimes!). If you follow the instructions and wait patiently for the second and first rise, and make sure your proofing place is warm enough, everything should be OK... Though in sourdough baking, there are always surprises around the corner!
I think I did get overly excited about the entire thing so probably didn't wait long enough before moving on. Nevertheless the bread tasted really delicious just a little dense like I mentioned. I'm still (patiently) waiting for my first rise to be complete. Thank you again for the recipe and instruction..I am a new stay-at-home mother and have turned to baking/bread making to fill some of the down time I get throughout the day. I'll keep trying until I get it, that's half of the fun!!
How was the second try? I'd love to know!
I am utterly confused on how to prepare the starter. Can you please help me?
Hi Chris! I'd love to help, but could you be more specific? Do you mean how to refresh the starter for this recipe, or in general - how to start a starter? If it's the latter, I have the recipe for a starter I really liked right here, I encourage you to give it a try. If you need more specific instructions, please email me at info at immigrantstable dot com.
Great and very unique recipe! I used a home brew kombucha starter and followed your recipe step by step. I added honey for a hint of sweetness and used spelt flour instead of whole grain. It was a huge success!
Thank you so much for sharing!