Whole Wheat Rosemary Bread

I am a big fan of the rosemary bread served in Macaroni Grill. As lovely as that bread is I was convinced that rosemary would be perfect in a whole wheat bread. The natural sweetness of a whole wheat bread seemed like a great match for rosemary. I am pleased to report that I was right and a little less pleased that other people have had this idea already. Nevertheless the other recipes did help a lot in the actual baking so I suppose it all worked out for good. The recipe I followed is here.

1 to 1 and 1/cup warm water
1 packet yeast
2 tsp sugar
1 and 1/2 cups bread flour ( King Arthur Bread Flour)
1 and 1/2 cups whole wheat flour ( King Arthur White Whole Wheat Flour)
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp oil
2 tbsp chopped fresh rosemary or dried rosemary ( I used a combination of the two since I did not want to over tax my relatively new rosemary plant)

Proof the yeast with the water and 1 tsp sugar. Add the flour and the salt to a bowl and stir. Add the oil and the rosemary to this mixture. To this also add the yeast and water mixture. Knead the dough for 10 minutes until you get a smooth dough. Add a little flour if the mixture is too wet for you.

Cover the dough and let it rise in a well oiled bowl for an hour. After an hour punch the dough down shape it into a loaf and put it into an oiled loaf tin for the second rise. Cover and let the loaf rise again for 45 minutes to an hour till the dough is 1 to 2 " above the loaf tin.

Preheat the oven at 350 F for about half an hour. Remove cover from loaf and bake for 35 to 40 minutes.

Be gentle with the loaf. I actually managed to knock mine some and the bread fell a little. Despite that I ended up with a very wholesome tasting whole wheat rosemary loaf for sandwiches all of next week.


Have a great weekend.