Sammy Wong's Kitchen

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There have been many silver linings during this pandemic for me. Several very special friendships blossomed through purely virtual interactions in a Zoom barre/yoga workout group that I joined earlier this spring with my daughter. A friend from this group, who is based in San Diego and I've yet to meet in person, shared ideas for sourdough bread flavors that her daughter has been experimenting with. One of her suggestions was a sundried tomato and roasted garlic bread. Every week since April, this exercise group has been sharing stories and swapping suggestions for books, Netflix films, DIY crafts, and recipes. Had it not been for The Virus, this wonderful circle of friends would not have come together.

I was inspired by my friend's sourdough suggestion and played around with it to create a festive holiday bread with green and red elements coming from the rosemary (one could also use green olives) and tasty sundried tomatoes. The delicious bold notes of this bread transport me to a farm in the Tuscany countryside that my family stayed at during one of our trips to Italy. Our villa was surrounded by gently sloping rows of grapevines. The elderly couple that owned the farm prepared dinner for us each evening and to this day, my daughters remember "Massimo's garlic toast". The husband would take slices of stale sourdough and scrub them with fresh garlic cloves and sprigs of rosemary before pan frying them in a generous pool of olive oil.

I increased the whole wheat flour content in this recipe. I also changed the technique to allow the sourdough to extract much of the micro-organisms in the wheat germ for maximum nutrition.

sundried tomato, roasted garlic and rosemary sourdough

It's important to know when to add the various inclusions since this recipe has rosemary, garlic and sundried tomatoes as "inclusions",

Tips.

Adding Inclusions.

Rosemary.

Since you want your fresh, chopped rosemary to be uniformly distributed throughout the bread, it is best to add it during the stretch and fold process. This allows the rosemary enough time to be fully incorporated into the dough. However, add this before the third stretch and fold, because you want the dough to build strength first before you add these herbs. Adding it too early will break some of the dough structure, resulting in a bread that may not rise well. Adding it at the end will result in a swirl of rosemary which may look good but would really be a mouthful of rosemary!

Garlic.

You can add the rosemary before the third stretch and fold or during pre-shaping. I like using roasted whole garlic cloves that I then slice. This results in occasional morsels of surprises when eating a slice of this bread. Estimate about half a bulb of garlic per loaf.

Sundried tomatoes.

Sundried tomatoes can be made. However, they are easily available in the stores either marinated in olive oil or dehydrated. Just look for sundried tomatoes that are bright red! Some inclusions, like the sundried tomato burn with the oven's high heat. As a result, it is best to only add the tomatoes at the end when you are doing the pre shaping so that all the tomatoes are nestled in the dough. However, this does not guarantee that some of these tomatoes may pop out when oven spring occurs, but will minimize the amount of sundried tomatoes being exposed.

Sourdough before proofing

Scored bread with inclusions

Baked bolle with inclusions

Another bolle with identical technique and inclusions popping out.

Another bolle with identical technique. See inclusions popping out.

Let me know what you think about this sundried tomato, rosemary & roasted garlic sourdough in the comment section.