Handmade, homemade bread is just the best. It can make a regular tin of tomato soup feel like the best thing you’ve eaten all week, make a quick snack of bread and butter feel luxurious and make a cheese board supper less about the cheese and more about the bread.
This particular bread is full of flavour, soft and thick. Me and Ste absolutely loved it and I can’t wait to bake it again.
Don’t try to substitute the roast garlic with raw garlic or lazy garlic. It just won’t be the same.
Roasted Garlic & Rosemary Bread
Ingredients
- 500g strong white bread flour
- 10g fine sea salt
- 7g fast acting yeast
- 300ml tepid water
- 40ml olive oil
- 1 large sprig of rosemary, finely chopped
- 2 large bulbs of garlic
- 2 tsp olive oil
Directions
- Heat your oven to 200C/400F and line a baking tray with tin foil. Tear off the papery outside from the garlic bulbs, but leaveing on the skin, place on the tray and pour over the 2 tsps of oilve oil. Roast in the oven for about 45 minutes until soft and leave to cool slightly.
- Squeeze the softened garlic from the skin and finely chop.
- Measure the flour into a large bowl and put the salt to one side and the yeast to the other.
- Pour in the 40ml of olive oil and two thirds of the water and mix together using a hand or even better in a large stand mixer with a dough hook.
- mix in the garlic and rosemary, then slowly add the remaining water until you have a soft dough and all of the flour has been combined.
- Knead on a slightly greased surface for around 10 minutes if doing it by hand, then place in a clean bowl and cover with a tea towel. Leave to rise in a warm spot until doubled in size (approximately 2 hours).
- Once risen, tip the dough onto a floured surface and knock back gently with your knuckles, to push out the air.
- Knead gently, then tuck the ends of the dough underneath to form a loaf shape. Place on a lined baking tray and leave to rise again for about an hour until almost doubled in size.
- Heat your oven to 220C/430F. Lightly make 2 or 3 shallow diagonal slices across the top of the risen dough with a VERY sharp knife. Pop in the oven a for 25 minutes. Lower the temperature to 200C/390F and cook for a further 10 minutes.
- Leave to cool slightly before cutting.
Serve as part of a cheese board, with farmhouse butter or with a bowl of piping hot tomato soup.

Enjoy!