Delicious Rosemary Garlic Sourdough Bread

This Rosemary Garlic sourdough bread is a perfect side for meat, hearty soups and stew dinners. You can make hearty grilled sandwiches with this hearty bread.

Making beautiful sourdough breads like this is not a difficult process once you get the sourdough starter perfected.

Flavorful rustic Rosemary Garlic sourdough bread is amazingly delicious.  This homemade sourdough recipe with rosemary leaves and roasted garlic is easy to make and so satisfying to eat.

Sourdough recipes with starter demand a lot of time from the baker. If you already have a starter going just make sure it’s very active before you begin this recipe.

The subject of sourdough begins with the starter. For those of you interested, This article is all about the food science of sourdough starter .

I use my wild yeast Sourdough starter. Follow the link to learn how to make your own wild yeast starter. 

I go on a sourdough frenzy once in a while and freeze up several homemade sourdough loves. Sourdough freezes REALLY well by the way. But it never lasts long in my freezer.  

If you’ve never made sourdough bread before go visit my Beginners sourdough Bread recipe. You’ll find a complete tutorial full of tips to help you out.

In the process of getting your starter active you will create sourdough discard. I have several recipes for you that use up the discard when your activating your starter.

Don’t let it go to waste. All that flour is expensive. And sourdough discard recipes as delicious!

My current favorite sourdough discard recipe is White Chocolate Sourdough cookies. They are amazing! And easy. 

Artisan Sourdough Bread Recipes:

Making your own Sourdough bread is just plain worth it. Baking bread is not difficult. It just takes time. If you have the proper tools. (They don’t cost much.)

It’s all about beating the learning curve. Once you have the Sourdough bread making basic methods down, it’s a beautiful hobby. And way of life. Making bread is fun, creative just enough foodie science thrown it to keep it interesting.

How do I add Garlic and Rosemary to Sourdough Bread?

The fresh rosemary and the roasted garlic cloves can be added to the sourdough bread dough after the autolyse stage (where the dough rests). Add the cooled garlic cloves and fresh chopped rosemary to the bread before the kneading process. The dough will be kneaded gently until the garlic and fresh rosemary are evenly distributed throughout.

Can you add Fresh Rosemary to Sourdough Bread?

Fresh Rosemary can be added to raw sourdough bread dough. Using fresh rosemary in sourdough bread can bring the best flavor profiles. Dried rosemary is not recommended, the flavor will be dull and not robust. For best results add fresh picked, chopped rosemary into the sourdough bread.

The Flours:

This is a whole grain bread. Or rather it’s a BLEND of whole wheat and all purpose or bread flour. As you see the crumb is a bit denser than my Artisan Sourdough bread. It’s more the look of this whole wheat sourdough bread version of that recipe.

Keeping the majority of the flour all purpose helps keep the bread from getting over the top dense with the addition of the roasted garlic. Choose a good quality high protein flour like King Arthur or Montana brands.

You can use 100 percent whole wheat flour if you prefer. The bread will be more rustic, tougher and with a chewier crust. Just perfect for dipping in a bowl of homemade soup.

Home ground flours:

I ground my white whole wheat berries very fine in my KoMo Mio grain mill just as I was preparing to make this Rosemary Garlic Sourdough Bread.

I like my 100 whole wheat grain flour very fresh so it won’t go rancid. If you buy your wheat check the date and make sure it’s very fresh.

I use white whole wheat berries for my whole wheat recipes. White wheat berries make the bread texture lighter than red wheat berries and still adds the delicious nutty flavor, extra fiber and nutrients only a whole wheat flour can give you.

How to make Rosemary Garlic Sourdough Bread:

I made Rosemary Garlic Sourdough Bread in my Bosch mixer. It worked great for all the stages right up to the final shaping. This may not work in all mixers but I used mine and had good luck with it. 

If you prefer to use a large mixing bowl that works fine too. I have made this recipe in a bowl by hand. It’s not really any harder. Just a little more hand work. You will knead this bread (very little) rather than use the stretch and fold method.

Although you CAN stretch and fold if you want to take the extra time.

The reason I made Rosemary Garlic Sourdough Bread in my mixer is in response to those of you that have asked for a quicker sourdough bread recipe. This is only going to take you about 14 hours total.

And most if that time the bread dough is doing the work and you are doing something else. Rosemary Garlic Sourdough Bread is AMAZING.

The flavor is so good and the dense chewy crust is a treat. We love this bread. It makes a good sandwich loaf.

The full recipe is in the Printable Rosemary Garlic Sourdough Bread recipe card at the bottom of this post. Below I give you tips on roasting garlic and the rosemary.

Roast Your Garlic:

If you have you ever roasted garlic you know it’s so incredible how garlic intensifies flavor when roasted in your oven. Here’s how I roast garlic for this Rosemary Garlic Sourdough Bread recipe.

Roasting Garlic:

Make a bunch of roasted garlic and freeze the extra. It holds several weeks in the fridge too.

1. Preheat your oven to 400
2. Use whole bulbs of garlic. This recipe uses one entire bulb of garlic. That’s a lot of garlic cloves.
3. Feel free to adjust the amount of garlic to your personal tastes. Especially if you use elephant garlic!
4. Cut the root end off the garlic bulbs.
5. Place each bulb on a square of tinfoil. Now wrap it tight.
   

Place the tinfoil wads of garlic on a baking sheet and place on your oven middle rack.

NOW.For small garlic bulbs like my French lavender variety check the bulbs after 20 minutes. Cool a bulb enough to check if the cloves are almost transparent and squishable.

But do not char them. If you over cook the bulbs the insides will dry out.  For this recipe you will take the garlic and squish it into your bread dough. You don’t want tough pieces or dried up burnt ones. 

For large bulbs the time will need to be increased.

Rosemary Leaves:

Use fresh whole rosemary leaves for the best flavor. I had some rosemary leaves fresh frozen and they worked well too.

Do NOT just sprinkle in a bunch of store bought dried rosemary from the spice isle and expect to get the full bodied flavor we are going for here.

The rosemary has to balance the roasted garlic. Fresh Rosemary leaves that are chopped will release their flavors into the bread dough. That’s the ticket.

Final Note on Rosemary: Be SURE to strip the fresh leaves off the stem. The stem will stay hard in the bread. Not so nice.

Psst: You can save the stems if you want to flavor a soup with them later. 🙂

Tips:

1. Always handle the dough only as much as necessary to help it develop the gluten. Most if this is passive work on your part. Just let it rest and rise slowly. The starter is busy working to develop the gluten. 
2. HOW do you know when the bread is fully proofed? You will learn by feel when a particular recipe is where you want it after you’ve made it a few times. But you should ALWAYS do the window pane test to make sure the dough is worked enough.
3. If you stretch the dough and it breaks before transparency the bread is going to be a brick. Keep working and resting the dough until it passes this crucial milestone.
4. You may chill this dough in the fridge. Cover the bowl with a plastic bag and let it rise overnight if you don’t have time to bake it before bed. A Long slow rise will usually do a bread dough good. Be careful though. You don’t want it overproofed.
5. As a final step CHILL the dough before baking. An hour in the fridge while preheating the oven and dutch oven will help the dough be more manageable when transferring to your hot pot. And a cold dough in a really hot pot will shock the dough and give you a better oven spring.
6. Spray your dough with a little water in the dutch oven before you cover it  for a crust with some tiny bubbles in it.
   

Your baking tips:

1. will depend on your dough ball size and how hot your oven is. And sometimes a bread can fool you. This recipe is tested at 450 or 500 degree F at  30 minutes covered in a preheated dutch oven. And then I take off the lid and bake it another 20 minutes. 
2. I pull out the bread and bake the final ten minutes on the oven rack. HOWEVER, your oven is not mine.
3. After you take the lid off and see how it looks. The crumb will be set and the crust will be very pale. Now bake with the lid off.
4. You want a golden brown crust. It’s easy to get a charred crust if you take off the lid and bake it in a very hot oven. This is NOT that big a deal. The bread will taste wonderful. 
5. I use a pizza stone which gives me a more stable oven temperature and helps the crust. I recommend you use a pizza stone under your bread.
6. Your bread is done when you thump it and it sounds hollow. The Crust will also be caramelized and have shiny spots where it’s been scored and the bread rises. This tells you it’s done. If you have a dense thudding sound and the crust is dark but no shiny places. Put it back in. Cover the bread with foil to keep it from over browning.
7. Baking in a hot oven is dangerous. USE oven mitts safe to 500 degrees F. You do not want to get your hot pot halfway out of the oven and find it’s just too hot to handle.

We here at Homemade Food Junkie enjoy your input on our posts and recipes.

Have you made Rosemary Garlic Sourdough Bread? Let us know how it goes for you. All our readers will benefit from your rating and experience. 

You’re going to love this sourdough bread dutch oven method. It makes wonderful sourdough sandwich bread too.

Grill it and make crostini with goat Cheese.  So many yummy ways to use this sourdough bread. Enjoy!

Your Printable Recipe Card:

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