Oregano Garlic Bread – Rustic bread with beautiful golden-brown crust loaded with herbs and bursting with flavors. Slice it, toast it with butter and enjoy as your breakfast with your morning coffee.
We, as a family, loves bread and experiment with different flavors. San loves baguette and he always picks up freshly baked baguette whenever we go for grocery shopping. I am still hunting a good bread shop in Jax. If you are aware of one such one stop shop for breads, then please do let me know.
I love baking breads as Little R loves freshly baked one and also, baking bread is very therapeutic. I have been baking a lot before Little R. Now, with a toddler, life took a completely different turn and priorities changed. Now, Rishi loves to explore food. What else do you need to cook and bake? He has been sick for last couple of days and has been suffering from Hand, Foot and mouth disease. Thanks to daycare. He picks all forms of germs from his daycare and passes to the entire family. Last year has been horrible as it was his first year in day care. Hopefully, 2023 will be much better than 2022. (Fingers crossed).
He is at home and has been spending most of his time with me in kitchen watching me cook our food. Of course, he helps me in my kitchen. One of the most important thing that I would love to do as a boy mom is not to restrict him in kitchen and stop normalizing as cooking is not meant for boys. The only option I had to engage him is to bake breads. Also, it’s therapeutic for me and San loves rustic bread with herbs.
Look at the golden-brown crust
I have a wide collection of cookery books, especially for breads. My go to favorite book is The Artisan Bread Cookbook by Kaitylin Donnelly. The book is meant for beginners and has simple homemade recipes with clear instructions. Today’s recipe is also from her book, and it’s a winner in our family. Rishi had bread without crust with loads of butter. Poor little one, he couldn’t eat anything for last couple of days because of sores in his mouth. Oregano Garlic bread is a dense bread with beautiful golden crust loaded with flavorful herbs.
My whole kitchen smelled heavenly during baking – Oregano and garlic is a match made in heaven. One can eat the bread as such or you can toast it with flavored olive oil. San toasted with butter and topped with Garlic chili infused Olive oil. Rishi had with Irish butter. If you love breads with herbs, then this is a must try.
Oregano Garlic bread needs kneading and double proofing, first proof for 2 hours and the second one for an hour. I am also thinking to write a post about Bread Science, hopefully soon.
Ingredients:
- 1 ½ teaspoon active dry yeast
- 1 cup warm water, 110 -115 F
- 2 teaspoon white sugar
- 2 teaspoon fine salt
- 3 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, plus extra to brush
- 2 ½ cups bread flour
- 1 tablespoon dried rosemary
- ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- ½ teaspoon dried oregano
- 1 head of roasted garlic
- Sea salt for sprinkling on top
Directions:
- Add the yeast to warm water. Add in the sugar and salt. Leave until it starts to foam. Do not stir too much. Yeast consumers sugar and starts to foam. This depends on your room temperature. On a warm day, this will be quick and on a cold day, this might take few minutes. Do not disturb.
- Once yeast creates foam, add in the oil and flour. Knead for 10 minutes.
- Add the oregano, pepper, and rosemary. Knead for 5 more minutes.
- Add garlic and knead the dough with hands for a minute. I minced the roasted garlic, spread the dough and spread the garlic evenly before kneading.
- Knead the dough to form a ball.
- Transfer the dough ball into an oiled bowl. Turn it to coat with oil from all sides.
- Tightly cover the dough using plastic wrap and leave for 2 hours until the dough doubles in size. I usually cover the bowl with kitchen towel and leave it in my pantry with lights off.
- Once it doubles in size, gently punch the dough down and knead to form a rounded loaf.
- Make a crisscross cut on top with a sharp knife.
- Place the dough on the baking sheet with seam side up. Cover it with a large bowl and leave it for an hour to rise again.
- Preheat the oven to 350 F
- The dough should have doubled by an hour. Brush the top of the dough with olive oil. Sprinkle rosemary and salt.
- Bake the dough for about 30 minutes. Spray it with water once in the middle of the baking.
- After 30 minutes, set the oven to 425F. Spray the bread with water again and bake in the oven until the crust becomes golden-brown
- Pull the bread out of the oven and cool it for about 40 minutes on a cooling rack before slicing it.
Tips:
- Measure the ingredients and keep it ready before baking. That’s the thumb-rule in baking.
- Ensure the yeast has not expired. Yeast is the essential ingredient for bread baking. If it has expired, discard it.
- Yeast is activated with warm liquids and feeds on sugar/starch and releases small bubbles of carbon di oxide which is the main reason for the dough to rise.
- Always use warm liquids to activate the yeast. Cold liquids slow down the reaction and sometimes even stop it.
- Ensure the temperature of water is always 110 – 115 F. Too hot liquid will kill the yeast and prevents it from rising.
- Kneading is the mot important step. I love kneading with my hands. If you want to know step by step kneading process, then check out wikiHow
- Spraying water on the top and baking at high temperatures forms a beautiful golden-brown crust on top of the bread.
- Ensure the bread is not closer to the heat source. Place the oven rack in the middle of the oven.
- Ensure to cool down the bread completely before slicing it.
- The bread can be refrigerated for a couple of days.
If you would like to check out my other bread recipes, then check out Oats Banana Beet Bread
If you try the recipe (which I highly recommend personally), do let me know how they tasted in comments. If you like space, do like and follow my profile here – Facebook, Google, Instagram
Thanks,
Karthi
