I grabbed a bunch of rosemary in the last produce basket we got so that I could make the rosemary-cream cheese sourdough. But, of course, there was quite a bit of rosemary left over, so I've been making other rosemary things in the meantime. This was the latest and, despite cutting the proofing slightly short, the bread is still lovely. Really phenomenal flavour! Would definitely recommend.

I tried one loaf with whole olives and one loaf with sliced olives. The whole olive loaf was much easier to handle and seemed to come out better overall. Neither one got super great oven spring, but I think that's more to do with the proofing and (lack of) lamination than anything to do with the olives. I got a bit lazy with this dough and didn't end up doing any kneading or stretch-and-folds beyond what was needed to work in the olives and rosemary. Honestly, the internal structure is surprisingly good considering that fact. But I'm sure doing some proper lamination of the dough would've helped it out even more.

The original recipe calls for liquid starter at 166% hydration, but then has you mixing a preferment at 102% hydration. Rather than trying to mix up a cup of the 166% starter and then adjusting the hydration again when mixing the preferment, I opted to just use my regular starter and adjust the amounts of flour and water called for to keep it at roughly 100% hydration. This felt simpler to me and seems to have yielded good results.

Rosemary-Olive Sourdough

Slightly adapted from Northwest Sourdough

Ingredients

Preferment

• 255g ripe/fed sourdough starter (100% hydration)
• 205g water
• 195g hard (strong/high grade/bread) whole wheat flour

Dough

• 623g hard (strong/high grade/bread) white flour
• 17g coarse sea salt
• preferment
• 283g water
• 28g unsalted butter, softened
• 2-4 Tbsp. minced fresh rosemary
• ~200g pitted kalamata olives

Directions

1. Mix the starter, water, and flour for the preferment, cover, and let it rest and ferment overnight.
2. The next day, combine the flour and salt, then pour in the preferment, water, and butter and mix well.
3. Knead for a few minutes to work all the flour in. The dough will be a bit stiff, but should come together.
4. Cover and allow to ferment at room temperature for 6-10 hours, stretching and folding every hour or to if possible.
5. Once the dough is nicely risen, divide it into two equal portions.
6. Press the dough portions flat and sprinkle each with 1-2 Tbsp. of rosemary and ~100g of olives.
7. Knead the dough to work in and distribute the olives and rosemary. If the dough becomes difficult to handle, cover and let rest for 10 minutes, then continue working.
8. Round the dough, cover and rest for 10 minutes.
9. Shape into loaves (preferably with a book fold for batards and similar shapes).
10. Place in bannetons, cover, and place in fridge overnight.
11. In the morning, remove from fridge and allow to proof at room temperature for 2-3 hours.
12. Preheat oven to 230°C (450°F).
13. Grease a baking sheet and dust it with cornmeal.
14. Pour some boiling water into a pan and place it on the bottom rack of the oven.
15. Turn loaves out onto prepared pan and slash as desired.
16. Bake loaves on middle rack oven over pan of boiling water for 20 minutes.
17. After 20 minutes, remove water pan and reduce oven temperature to 220°C (425°F) and bake for another 10-15 minutes.
18. Turn oven off and leave loaves in hot oven for 10 minutes.
19. Remove from oven and transfer to wire rack to cool.