Nancy Silverton's La Brea Bakery Rosemary Olive Oil Bread

This bread uses a white starter. If you already maintain a sourdough starter, use it here. If you don't have one, you'll have to start one to make this bread. You can do research online for how to make a sourdough starter if you'd like to begin one. Feel free to half the recipe and make just one loaf.


Two-Day Bread--First day:

MAKES TWO APPROX. 1 POUND 11 OZ. BOULES

--1 pound plus 2 oz. (about 2 1/4 cups) cool water, 70 degrees F
--12.5 oz (about 1 1/3 cups) White Starter
--2 pounds plus 2 oz. (about 7 cups)unbleached white bread flour, plus extra for dusting
--1/2 cup raw wheat germ
--3.5 tsp. sea salt
--1 tbsp. finely chopped fresh rosemary
--4 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
--Vegetable oil

Place water, white starter, flour, and wheat germ in the bowl of a mixer fitted with a dough hook. Mix on low speed for 4 min. The dough should be sticky and pliable. You may also mix the dough by hand, if you choose. Cover the dough with a proofing cloth and allow to rest in mixing bowl for 20 min.

Add salt and continue mixing for 4 min. on medium speed, scraping the dough down the sides of the bowl as necessary with a rubber spatula. Add rosemary and olive oil and mix on medium speed until the ingredients are incorporated and the dough reaches an internal temperature of 78 degrees F, about 5 minutes more. Remove dough from mixing bowl. It should feel soft and resilient. Knead the dough for a few minutes by hand on a lightly floured surface. Lightly coat a large bowl with vegetable oil. Place the dough in the oiled bowl, cover it tightly with plastic wrap, and let it ferment at room temperature until it doubles in volume, about 3-4 hours.

Uncover the dough and turn it out on a lightly floured surface. Using a dough cutter, cut the dough into two equal pieces. Slap each piece against the work surface a few times to deflate. Tuck under the edges of each piece, cover the dough with a cloth, and let it rest for 15 minutes.

Uncover the dough and round each piece into a boule. Place the boules smooth side down into floured proofing baskets. Cover each basket with a cloth and let the dough proof at room temperature until it begins to show signs of movement (it should rise about 1 inch), 1.5 to 2 hours.

Remove the cloth and sprinkle surface of dough with flour. Wrap each basket tightly in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 8 to 12 hours.


Second day:

Remove the boules from the fridge, take off plastic and cover baskets with cloths. Let dough continue proofing at room temp. until internal dough temp. is 58 degrees F, about 2 to 2.5 hours.

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees 1 hour before baking.

Remove the cloth and lightly dust the boules with flour. Carefully run your hand around one boule to loosen it and gently invert it onto a lightly floured baker's peel. Score a tic-tac-toe pattern on top of the boule. Open the oven door, spritz heavily with hot water from a spray bottle, and quickly close the door. Open the oven door again, slide the boule onto the baking tiles, and quickly close the door. Do the same with the second boule.

Reduce oven temp. to 450 degrees. Spritz oven two more times during the next 5 minutes. Refrain from opening the oven door for the next 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, check the boules and rotate them if necessary to ensure even baking. Continue baking for 15 to 20 more minutes, for a total of 40 to 45 minutes.

Remove boules to a cooling rack. The finished boules will have a rich brown color.

Making Bread

I had no idea that bread making would be so much fun and intensely satisfying. I'm so glad that I started! It is a thrill to see how such simple ingredients become something alive and life-giving...not to mention the irresistible nature of bread dough--each batch does indeed feel different in your hands and has its own personality. Come to think about it, perhaps the sensory experience of bread making is exactly what makes me so fond of it.

Touch: Feeling dough in my hands is thoroughly enjoyable to me. It may be easy to work with, malleable, and barely sticky or it may be fussy, sticky, a wet mass that's seemingly impossible to knead... Manipulating the dough through the kneading process allows me to feel the dough as it changes. The mass develops more strength, becomes elastic and less sticky as the gluten is developed. And for doughs with lower hydration levels (i.e. the ones that aren't messy and sticky), the dough becomes smooth by the end of the kneading process.

Sight: Of course these same changes that I feel with my hands, I also observe with my eyes. I can see the dough sticking to my work surface and hands when working with wetter doughs and I see that I have an easier clean up when the dough is not so sticky--LOL. I observe the weak dough that tears apart when I stretch it early in the kneading process, but that strengthens considerably and doesn't tear when stretched when I am finished kneading. It is my eyes that I rely on to know when my dough has doubled and can be deflated and shaped. My eyes help me to know if my bread is ready to come out of the oven by looking at the color of the crust. And my eyes scan the crumb (the soft part) of the bread which differs depending on the type of bread and how it was made.

Sound: So, what role do my ears have here? Actually, they are the least important to bread making. However, I do slap my dough down on my work surface several times during kneading (that's how the French do it) and I like that smacking sound... Then there's my timer that goes off when my bread should be about ready to come out of the oven. But my favorite is hearing the crackling of crusty bread when you break it open. This reason alone is enough to make French bread daily!

Smell: Thank God for my nose so that I can enjoy the smell of bread baking in my oven! It is absolutely one of my favorite odors and it never gets old. It makes me hungry with anticipation when I start to smell it baking...one of the most lovely smells ever if you ask me.

Taste: This is where all the work comes together. This is the most important part. What's the point of having a beautiful loaf if it doesn't taste good? But an imperfect-looking loaf can be overlooked if it has great flavor!

Making bread only requires flour, water, yeast, and salt (salt is optional, but your bread will taste awfully bland without it...it also keeps the yeast from multiplying TOO much). And there is more out there than the active dry yeast you may be most familiar with. Instant yeast, fresh cakes of yeast, and wild yeast (available free of charge hovering in your kitchen), will also leaven your bread if the yeast, flour, and water are allowed to slowly ferment for about a week... So these four ingredients become bread! I think that's way cool!

A year ago when I began making yeast breads by hand (I had used my bread machine a few times before that but wasn't impressed with the quality of bread), I simply felt inspired to do it. I remember asking myself what was hindering me from making bread. My main obstacle was knowing how to knead. I didn't know what good kneading technique looked like, didn't understand the purpose of kneading. So I had the idea to look on You Tube for some tutorials and I found plenty, a couple of them really helpful. I learned what kneading looked like and came across some recipes that didn't require real kneading of the bread. I had good success with the no-knead bread and it boosted my confidence to try some breads that required kneading. To my amazement, I was able to knead the bread just like the lady in the video that I'd watched. And it was so soothing, not laborious at all. It was at that moment that I was hooked.

Perhaps your objection to bread making is that it requires too much time. While it is true that you must allow time for your bread to rise (fermentation of the dough), the real labor is minimal. Mixing the dough, kneading, and shaping can usually be done in less than 25 minutes total. And many doughs lend themselves well to an overnight rise in the fridge after they are mixed. So you can sleep and forget about the dough during the first or second rising. I often decide the night before what bread I will make, take 15 minutes to mix and knead the dough after breakfast while the children are playing, let it rise until nap time (I can use the fridge to slow down fermentation/rising if I need to), deflate, shape, and second rising during nap time, score the dough with a blade, bake, and have it ready to eat by dinnertime. OR, I may mix it up and knead it once the children have been put to bed, let it rise in the fridge overnight, let it come to room temperature (if required) for the shaping...and continue as above. I do my best to put the dough on my schedule and not vice versa. It actually is quite accommodating most times. I really like using a natural leaven in my breads. I also use commercially packaged yeast, but my preference is wild yeast for the flavor and texture it gives to bread. Also, when you use a natural leaven, the rising times are longer than with packaged yeast. Those longer periods spent rising/fermenting develop more flavor and give beautiful character to the crumb. Longer rising times are easier for me to fit into my schedule. I just let it sit and forget about it, for the most part, except for maybe folding the dough once or twice during the first fermentation.

I have a sourdough starter that I maintain. A sourdough starter, like all starters, is just flour and water that has been left to ferment for about a week or more. The flour and water becomes a home for the wild yeast in the air and after a while, there's enough wild yeast in the flour/water mixture to leaven dough without any additional packaged yeast. The wild yeast in your kitchen is different than the yeast present in mine. And thus the flavor will be different, too. There are certain yeast strains that are unique to certain locals, as is the case with the famous San Francisco Sourdough Bread. I cannot replicate the flavor of that bread entirely because I do not live where that strain of yeast resides. I love that! It's so fascinating to me that my kitchen will have different strains and quantities of yeast than the next person and that our bread will taste differently because of it.

The more bread baking you do, the more yeast is present. So when I started my sourdough starter/natural leaven, it didn't take long for me to see some yeast activity. I started with water and rye flour because rye flour encourages fermentation and helps the yeast to multiply. On the third day, I was using all white flour in my starter. By day 6, my starter was ready to be used because I had an abundant supply of yeast present in my kitchen to help it out! In the photos for this blog post, you see a picture of the flour/water mixture on day 2 and on day 6. Big difference, huh? It's nothing short of amazing, quite frankly. All of the bubbles you see are yeast activity. Flour + Water + Time = Good Bread. If you're just starting out, it will probably take longer for your starter to become mature and ready to use. Once it's ready, you just leave it on the counter and "refresh" it daily. Refreshing it means to discard all but about 1/2 cup of the starter (or use it to make bread, sourdough pancakes, and other treats) and feed the rest with fresh water and flour of a certain proportion, depending on the hydration percentage of your starter. I maintained mine for a little while on the counter, but have recently begin storing it in the fridge and refreshing it once a week when I'm not using it. This is working just fine. I like this better since I'm not using as much flour. But, thankfully, flour is inexpensive, even the quality brands.

When you use a starter, the bread making process is a little lengthier, but I recommend it because it gives your bread more flavor and helps it stay fresher longer. There's so much more flavor in a sourdough starter that's been maintained for weeks, months, or years than there is in commercially packaged yeast. The same is true for other types of starters, all of which take seconds to mix up. Biga, poolish, levain, sourdough, these are all terms for bread starters. They just differ in the amount of time you have to let them sit to ferment and the flour/water ratio you use to mix them. But fermentation is a hands off process, so please don't be put off by the extra step of making/maintaining a starter. That being said, there are also times when I want a loaf of yeast bread on the table within 4 hours from start to finish. And this is very easily accomplished and you will still have delicious bread (I refer to my Beth Hensperger books for times like this). The flavors won't be as complex, though.

In cooking, there are so many possibilities that you are never bored if you're willing to try something new and be creative. I have found this to be true in bread making as well. I have hardly made the same bread twice! There are so many new things to try! But I never tire of Rosemary Olive Oil Bread. This is my favorite. I grew very fond of La Brea Bakery's loaf and purchased Nancy Silverton's (the bakery owner) bread book about 10 years ago when I was in a cookbook club. I remember looking through the book when it arrived and knowing immediately that I wouldn't use it. I certainly didn't have that skill level then and I was very closed to the idea of taking 2 days or more to make a loaf of bread! Fast forward 10 years and I have now achieved that skill level and can make any loaf in her book. When I made her bread, it was a pinnacle moment for me. I was very proud. This is just a testimony of what a little desire, passion, time, wild yeast, and You Tube can do for you...LOL. Who would've known I'd be making the loaves I stood in line for at the bakery and that I'd fall in love with the process from the very first fermentation? Amazing, indeed.

Recipe Request--French Brioche

(makes 1 loaf)

3 cups white bread flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 ounce fresh yeast OR 1 tbsp active dry yeast
4 tbsp lukewarm milk
3 eggs
3/4 cup butter, softened
2 tbsp sugar

For the glaze:
1 egg yolk
1 tbsp milk

1. Sift flour and salt into large bowl and make a well in center. Put the yeast in a measuring cup and stir in the milk. Add the yeast mixture to the center of the flour with the eggs and combine to form a soft dough.

2. Knead the dough for 4-5 minutes, until smooth and elastic.

3. Cream butter and sugar using mixer. Gradually add butter mixture to the dough, making sure it is well incorporated before adding more. You can do this with a stand mixer with dough hook or just knead it in by hand. The dough should look smooth, shiny, and elastic when you are finished.

4. Oil a clean bowl lightly with vegetable oil and put dough in. Turn to coat both sides. Cover with lightly oiled plastic wrap and let rise until doubled in size, 1-2 hours.

5. Gently turn out dough from bowl to deflate. Place dough right back into bowl, recover, and refrigerate for 8-10 hours or overnight.

6. Lightly grease a 7-cup brioche mold. Turn dough out onto lightly floured surface. Cut off almost a quarter of the dough and set it aside. Shape the remaining dough into a ball and place it in the prepared mold. Shape the reserved dough into an elongated egg shape. Using two or three fingers, make a hole in the center of the large ball of dough. Gently press the narrow end of the egg-shaped dough into the hole.

7. Combine the egg yolk and milk for the glaze, and brush a little on the brioche. Cover with the oiled plastic wrap and let rise, in a warm place, for 1.5 - 2 hours, or until dough nearly reaches the top of the mold.

8. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Brush the brioche with the remaining glaze and bake for 10 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 375 degrees and bake for another 20-25 minutes, or until golden. Turn out onto wire rack to cool.

**There is lots of waiting time with this bread. But don't let that deter you. This rich-tasting, buttery, light and airy loaf will be worth the wait!

**You can look for fresh yeast in your natural foods store (refrigerated section) or your local bakery. If you can't find it, just use active dry yeast. You'll get similar results.

Recipe Request--Honey Whole Wheat Bread

(makes 2 loaves)

3.5 cups warm water
3 tbsp honey
2 packs active dry yeast
4.5 cups white bread flour
4.5 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup wheat germ
2 tbsp fine coarse salt
vegetable oil for bowl, pans, and plastic wrap
1 large egg yolk
1 tbsp heavy cream

Combine water, honey, and yeast in medium bowl with a whisk and allow to sit/proof for 10 minutes, until foamy.

In large bowl, add 4 cups white bread flour, all of the whole wheat flour, the wheat germ, and the salt. Whisk together until blended. Make a well in the center and pour in the yeast mixture. Stir with a wooden spoon gradually incorporating the dry ingredients into the yeast mixture.

Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead in the remaining 1/2 cup of white bread flour, a little at a time. Continue kneading until dough is smooth and elastic, about 15 minutes by hand. Pat dough into a ball and flatten slightly. Place into a lightly oiled bowl and turn to coat both sides. Cover with lightly oiled plastic wrap to help keep moisture in and let dough rise in a warm, draft-free place until it has doubled in size, about 1 to 1.5 hours.

Brush 2 loaf pans with oil. Gently turn out dough to deflate it and divide it in half. Shape into loaves and place in pans. Cover pans with oiled plastic wrap. Let rise again in warm place until doubled in size, about 45 minutes. Preheat oven to 400 degrees 20 minutes before baking.

Using a baker's lame, razor, or sharp knife, slash loaves down the center in a quick and even motion.

In a small bowl, beat egg yolk with the heavy cream, and brush over the tops of the loaves.

Bake until bread is deep golden brown, about 50-60 minutes. Transfer to wire rack and allow to cool.

**You can use non-stick foil to line your loaf pans instead of oiling them. I use it all the time and love it because it eliminates clean up!

**Take care and knead dough well. The time you spend kneading and allowing dough to rise will be well rewarded with delicious and nutritious loaves of bread.

**Humidity and environmental factors can affect the water to dough ratio. You may find you need a little less flour or a little more flour to create good doughs on some days.