I should be safe from vampires...

A Rosemary and Garlic Braid.

Five bulbs of garlic, roasted in a pan with chopped fresh rosemary (from the four foot tall plant near the front porch!), and olive oil.

The paste is mixed with nine (ish) cups of flour, lots of yeast, heated milk, water and butter. Allow to double in size, then divide dough into thirds, braid on a baking sheet, let double again, the bake fifteen minutes; (here's where I differed from the original recipe...it called for butter and garlic salt) I brushed the bread with the olive oil, garlic and rosemary mix left over from the foccacia, bake another fifteen minutes.




I had no idea the bread would turn out this...huge! We gave a least a third of it to the in-laws.

You'd think five bulbs of roasted garlic and 1/4 cup of chopped rosemary would make for a strongly-flavored bread. Not the case.
Instead, the garlic is more of an after-taste. The bread itself is very soft, and quite lovely, really.

Matt's looking forward to making sandwiches out of it. Alex ate a couple of large pieces while running around the house.

It's a bit of work, but you end up with a pretty nice (and enormous!) bread.