Fresh Tomato and Rosemary Bread

This bread has sort of been created accidentally. My mum’s tomato plant has been sprogging like mad so I thought I’d try a flavoured bread. One problem I found was that most tomato bread recipes include some kind of cheese which is verboten in our house at the moment. I started to get hungry so I just thought flap it, I’m going to make a recipe up. This bread also accidentally became a half and half loaf because I only realised as I was weighing out my flour that I didn’t have 500g of white…The end result is a sort of hovis-esque more bready than a focaccia should be but also more holey than normal bread should be loaf. I hope you’ve followed so far.

Ingredients (makes 2 loaves)

250g strong white bread flour

250g wholemeal bread flour

10g salt

10g instant yeast

Around 100ml of extra virgin olive oil

360ml cold water

Seasoning

Good handful of fresh rosemary

About 20 baby tomatoes

First off I apologise for the lack of photos! I’d already started when I realised the battery had died so the pictures start kind of half way through…

In a large mixing bowl weigh out the flour. Add the salt to one side and the yeast to the other. Pour in around 40ml of olive oil and three quarters of the water to the flour and combine using the spidey-hand motion. Keep adding the water a bit at a time until all the dry ingredients are picked up.

This is quite a wet mixture because it’s adapted from a focaccia one so don’t be put off that the mixture is very wet and DON’T be tempted to add more flour. Drizzle some olive oil on your work surface and knead the dough for a good ten minutes until it feels lovely and elastic. One of those plastic bread scrapey things that I definitely don’t own would come in handy here.

Pop the dough into a lightly oiled bowl and cover with a tea towel. Leave in a warm place for about an hour or until doubled in size.

Et Voilà we have the first photo!

Tip the dough out onto a very lightly floured work surface, hardly handling the dough to keep the air in. Gently separate the dough into two.

Line two baking sheets with parchment. Put the dough on the sheet and gently stretch it out into a rectangular shape.

Now halve your tomatoes and gently press them all across the top of the dough. Generously cover with rosemary and end with a good drizzle of olive oil and some seasoning. Leave them both to the side to rest for 10-15 minutes while you preheat the oven to 210⁰C.

Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown. The bottom should sound hollow when you tap it.

This bread has a gorgeous sweet savoury taste because of the tomatoes and goes beautifully with some soup.

(Here are some snaps of my mum’s tomato and rosemary plants because it will make her happy.)