Adventures in Sourdough, Episode 3: Roasted Garlic & Rosemary Bread

After making two basic loaves, I am obviously an expert ready to branch out & try new things, right?  Probably not.  But we DID want to mix it up a bit.  I spent some time on Pinterest searching for recipes and things to make with the discard. And there are PLENTY of options out there.  I contemplated making a sourdough king cake (which is still a future possibility, but we didn't have milk or eggs so it was a no-go for today).  

After reading the list of options off to The Hubs, he suggested the rosemary garlic bread--two of my favorite flavors, so I was happy to oblige.

This week, I decided to feed before discarding half of the starter, because after a week in the fridge Mandough was looking a little sad, and I wanted to try making bread with a happy, bubbly STARTER rather than the discard to see if that made a difference in rise time and texture.  But...this recipe only calls for 1/4 cup of starter, so I had a lot left over and had to split some off, which I gifted to my neighbor.

Mandough and his offshoot.....Gro-goo. :)

I also decided to play around with adding bread flour into the mix.  I picked up a couple pounds from our local bulk food shop, rather than investing in a full 5 pound bag (note to future self: this is not actually cost effective, since the bulk food store only sells organic whole wheat bread flour at $2.49/lb, whereas a 5lb bag of King Arthur bread flour is only $6 at Walmart. Live & learn).  The recipe called for 4 cups of flour, so I did 50/50 AP and bread flour.

I roasted a bulb of garlic in the oven for 45 minutes while the dough did its initial rest, then mixed the roasted garlic & 2 tsp of dried rosemary into the dough, and let it begin the bulk rise...

...at 3:30pm.  

The bulk rise is supposed to take typically about 8-12 hours.  I have not figured out the best times to start this process yet, obviously.  But, we roll with what we got.  So I put it in the fridge at 10:30pm (7 hrs of room temp bulk rise) to continue proofing while we went to bed.

The next morning, pulled it out of the fridge, and it looked nice & doubled.  Let it come to room temp, then reshaped it a bit...and then it was time for church, so I had to throw it back in the fridge for the second rise.

Post bulk rise. Kitchenware staged to duplicate first photo for scale.

Post-church, pulled it back out to come back to room temp, then heated up the oven to 450F.

A few minor goofs with this loaf--I never flipped it over after folding/kneading it into a ball, so the seam was facing up when it went into the oven. Also, unlike the basic sourdough recipe I've been following, this recipe didn't recommend turning the oven down to 400F. So it's not the prettiest loaf, and we got a lil' bit of char on the edges of the seams that puffed up.

I had a few slices of last week's loaf still hanging out in the fridge for comparison:

I would say this loaf was definitely a bit softer, chewier, but the bottom crust was pretty hard (likely from the high oven temp).  Would have been better with fresh rosemary (we only had dried), but still good flavor. And made an excellent grilled cheese!