BBA Challenge Bread #28—Potato Rosemary Bread

Yet another winner from the tome that is The Bread Baker's Apprentice. Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread. This formula, Potato Rosemary Bread, is indeed extraordinary and worth repeating. Just looking at the photos again makes me want to bust out the garlic, rosemary, mashed potatoes and other nummy ingredients and make this one again – pronto. I think you should do the same!

I'm (slowly) baking my way through Peter Reinhart's award winning book, The Bread Baker's Apprentice, along with 200+ other amateur bakers (maybe not that many anymore-it's hard to telll!). Want to join in the madness, or just learn more about this semi-crazy undertaking? Check out the following links:

• Pinch My Salt BBA Challenge page—master resource for the challenge
• Buy the Book Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart
• List of Breads See what's coming up.
• Blogroll See who's baking. Great list of some amazing foodie (and not-necessarily-foodie) blogs.
• Flickr Group Photos, photos and more photos!
• Facebook
• Twitter Search for #BBA to find challenge tweets.

First off, the name of this bread is a bit of a misnomer and is missing the best ingredient – GARLIC. And not just garlic, ROASTED garlic. Granted, it is an optional ingredient, but come on. It's roasted garlic, people, which should never, ever be optional. Ever. Or if it is "optional" it should be like the specifications in a bunch of the RV literature I deal with at work. They list "mandatory options" which, let's face it, is a total oxymoron. Don't be an oxymoron. Roast up some garlic when you make this bread. It's the right thing to do. AND it's super simple.

Grab a head of garlic, pull all the papery outsides off and split apart the cloves. Pop them in an oiled pan, drizzle some oil over the cloves and pop in the oven. I used the toaster oven set at 325 or 350°F (can't remember). Here's the tutorial I followed from King Arthur Flour, thanks to the heads up from fellow BBA Baker, Paul at Yumarama.

Squish the now-roasted garlic out of their jackets. Stick your face over the top of the plate and inhale. Close your eyes, smile and sigh. All's right with the world at that very moment.

Moving on.


The recipe calls for fresh rosemary but I couldn't find any at the store, so I grabbed my trusty Penzey's dried rosemary. Open the top, inhale, smile and sigh. Good stuff.

Here are all of the component parts, or most of them at any rate. As you'll notice, this bread utilizes a preferment – biga – to help develop the flavor of the dough. I was conservative with the rosemary since I was using dried. Dried = more intense. After tasting the bread, though, I could have easily doubled it (for my taste, anyway) since I thought it could handle a more robust rosemary flavor.

Same with the garlic. I'd double this next time. It could have used an extra garlicy kick.

After kneading in the garlic and letting it ferment, I decided to split the dough in half.

Half for rolls.

Half for a boule. (This is a quarter sheet pan, so the loaf is not as big as you might think.)

Proofed and ready for the oven.

All done and rather gorgeous looking, don't you think? But let me tell you about how they SMELLED. Divine, that's how. The crust was crusty and delicious. The crumb was soft and delicious. It was delicious. The ONLY thing I was a bit disappointed about was that I wish I'd used more garlic and rosemary. But it was still fantastic. This one's a keeper, for sure!

Check out some other heavenly loaves at these BBA Baker's blogs!

Oggi at The Home Baker

Paul at Yumarama

Mags at The Other Side of 50

Angela at Gourmet Hotdish & Other Culinary Disasters

Emily at Ready to Wait



p.s. Sorry for the weird, al-over-the-place formatting of this post. Blogger hates me. Or something. Anyway, I'm hoping to figure out why font sizes won't hold and all that jazz.