Rosemary Sea Salt Bread Loaf

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I don’t think I can totally describe to you how much joy it gives me to make (and gift!) bread. If you’ve read this blog post, you know my process and tools, and that I use Ken Forkish’s method and ingredient ratios no matter what type of bread loaf I’m making. I’ve made jalapeno cheddar bread before, but this time I wanted to try my hand at a different type of bread loaf with inclusions, recreating one of our favorite baguettes we normally get at a local grocery store: rosemary sea salt.

If you’re thinking YUM, you are correct 😉

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ingredients

Before you start, don’t forget to get Ken Forkish’s book Flour Water Salt Yeast. So many great recipes and tips and tricks throughout!

Here’s what I used to make two rosemary sea salt bread loaves:

method

  • Mix flour and water by hand, cover and let sit for 20-30 minutes

  • Remove rosemary leaves from sprigs and chop roughly (it’s best to have a mix of large and small pieces!)

  • Add sea salt, yeast, and fresh rosemary and fold in using Ken’s pincer method; let sit for a few minutes and then fold for another 30 seconds.

  • Do your first fold in the first 10 minutes after mixing. Take the corners and fold them into the center. Once all corners are folded in, lift up the dough and flip it over so the bottom becomes the top.

  • Let sit and do another fold and flip in about an hour.

  • After your second fold, let the dough sit until it is roughly 3x in size, about 5 hours after mixing

  • Once triple in size, the dough is ready to be divided. Pour out of the bin onto a lightly floured surface. Divide into two equal sizes (you can eyeball this!).

  • With each dough ball, fold the corners into the middle and flip it so the bottom becomes the top. Cup the back of the dough ball with your hands and drag it on the countertop toward you to form a tighter ball.

  • Generously flour your proofing baskets and place each dough ball in its respective basket. Sprinkle the tops with a bit of flour and let rise for about an hour and 15 minutes.

  • About 45 minutes prior to baking, heat up your oven to 475 degrees with your dutch oven inside, lid on.

  • 20 minutes before you bake the first loaf, place the second loaf in the refrigerator.

  • Carefully remove the dutch oven and place one dough ball in the dutch oven. Carefully put the lid back on and place it back into the oven. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove lid and then bake for another 15 minutes.

  • Once your first loaf is done, repeat the baking method with your second loaf.

  • Enjoy!

If you try this recipe, let me know how you like it! And check out my video below to see how I made these super yummy bread loaves.

Less

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A little about the book

Follow a ‘failed’ novelist about to turn fifty around the world. Arthur Less visits Mexico, Italy, Germany, Morocco, India and Japan and puts thousands of miles between him and the problems he refuses to face, including an ex-boyfriend who’s now engaged to someone else.

Arthur will almost fall in love in Paris, almost fall to his death in Berlin, barely escape to a Moroccan ski chalet from a Sahara sandstorm, accidentally book himself as the (only) writer-in-residence at a Christian Retreat Center in Southern India, and arrive in Japan too late for the cherry blossoms. In between: science fiction fans, crazed academics, emergency rooms, starlets, doctors, exes and, on a desert island in the Arabian Sea, the last person on Earth he wants to see. Somewhere in there: he will turn fifty. The second phase of life, as he thinks of it, falling behind him like the second phase of a rocket. There will be his first love. And there will be his last.

A love story, a satire of the American abroad, a rumination on time and the human heart, by an author The New York Times has hailed as “inspired, lyrical,” “elegiac,” “ingenious,” as well as “too sappy by half,” Less shows a writer at the peak of his talents raising the curtain on our shared human comedy.

A little about the author

Andrew Sean Greer is the author of five works of fiction, including the bestseller The Confessions of Max Tivoli, which was named a best book of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Chicago Tribune. He is the recipient of the Northern California Book Award, the California Book Award, the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, and the O. Henry Prize for short fiction, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Public Library. He lives in San Francisco and Tuscany.

Less book review

This book, for me, was hard to get into at first. The main character, Arthur Less, was a bit too whiny for my taste — especially given all of the success he had enjoyed. But after a book club discussion (to which I called into the Zoom gathering unprepared as I DNF), I decided I’d give it another try.

While it didn’t become my MOST favorite book I’ve ever read, I was happy I ended up actually reading and finishing the book — there’s a reason it won the Pulitzer Prize. Less is a highly relatable, self-conscious, self-deprecating character. Always thinking LESS of himself and also always wanting MORE out of life, Less finds it difficult to live in the moment. I’m not saying it’s me, but… it’s me — at least sometimes. I mean, can’t we all relate to being self-conscious, critically self-deprecating, and not-super-present?

Yes, Less, for me, was hard to get into at first. But if you’re having the same issue, I encourage you to try again. You may just find, like I did, that underneath all of his flaws, Less is a pretty lovable, goofy character and you’ll find yourself cheering for him (even if he is sometimes annoying). ★ ★ ★ ★

The Midnight Library

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A little about the book

Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices . . . Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?

In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig’s enchanting new novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.

A little about the author

Matt Haig was born in Sheffield, England in 1975. He writes books for both adults and children, often blending the worlds of domestic reality and outright fantasy, with a quirky twist. His bestselling novels are translated into 28 languages. The Guardian has described his writing as 'delightfully weird' and the New York Times has called him 'a novelist of great talent' whose writing is 'funny, riveting and heartbreaking'.

The Midnight Library book review

The Midnight Library definitely has torn reviews. While the vast majority on Goodreads are positive, leaving the book with 4.21 stars from nearly 160,000 ratings, there are some in the bookish community who feel like the writing is too casual about serious things, like mental health and suicide… and I tend to agree. The first sentence of the first few chapters really made me uncomfortable. But maybe that’s the point. It definitely gets you thinking about how precious life is and how real mental health struggles are.

All of that said, I did enjoy the book. I liked the premise — while I don’t feel like I have a ton of regrets in my life (or that I’d want to explore living an alternate life where I chose a different path), I do think it’s relatable and interesting that even seemingly minuscule decisions could have such a large impact on where you end up. There were some ‘books’ (lives) Nora chose from the shelf that I wanted to read more about and some that I wanted to read less about, and the ending was a bit predictable, but otherwise it was a really enjoyable, quick, and easy read. Matt Haig’s style of writing definitely kept me wanting to read more.

Definitely recommend if you are interested in time travel or looking for a more approachable fantasy read: ★ ★ ★.5