Bread making is one of life’s simpler pleasures. It takes a little bit of effort with all that kneading, and some patience, too, as you wait for the dough to rise, but that makes the result all the more enjoyable.

This time of year, when it’s naturally warmer here in the northern hemisphere, is a great time for bread-making as you can use the warmth in the air to prove your loaves more quickly. With that in mind we decided to bake ourselves a couple of loaves of rosemary and olive bread, using the rosemary from the small shrub we have outside the kitchen door.

Method
Measure your flour into the bowl, sieving it to get rid of any lumps. Add the salt and the butter, which should be finely diced. Add your sliced olives and your freshly snipped rosemary and give it all a good mix.

Flour, salt, olives, butter and rosemary, ready for mixing

Make up the yeast as per the instructions on your particular brand. In our case we mix two teaspoons of dried yeast with one teaspoons of sugar in 150ml of water. This 150ml is taken from our 450ml allocation above.

When the yeast has fermented and got a good head on it, pour it into the flour along with the rest of the warm water and mix it together with the wooden spoon.

When it’s well mixed you need to get the dough in your hands and start kneading. Scatter a work surface with flour to stop it sticking and empty out your dough onto it. Knead it well, pressing into the middle of the dough ball with the heel of your hand and folding the edge into the centre. Do this for at least 10 minutes and then return the dough to the bowl, cover the top of the bowl with cling film and leave it somewhere warm to rise.

On the left, the kneaded dough. On the right, it has doubled in size after rising.

Keep an eye on it. You want it to more or less double in size. As we had put ours in the sun it took about 45 minutes, but it could take as long as two hours. Just make sure it doesn’t get too hot or you could kill the yeast.

When it had doubled in size, kneed it again and then split the dough in half, putting each half in a separate greased loaf tin.

Dough, rising in the tins

Cover them with a damp tea towel and put them somewhere warm again until they have once again doubled in size. They are now ready for baking in an oven for 35 – 45 minutes at 230 degrees Celsius (445 degrees Fahrenheit) until the crusts have browned.

Optionally you could do what we did before baking, and pop a sprig of rosemary on top.

When they have finished baking remove them from the tins, being careful not to burn yourself, and set them on a wire cooling rack to cool.

Rosemary and olive bread

Related posts:

1. A steady supply of home-baked bread
2. Starting to make sourdough bread
3. We’ve made beer bread