Roasted Garlic and Rosemary Sourdough Rolls

 

So, were you wondering what became of the garlic?  Here's your answer!

I love the combination of garlic and rosemary.  I especially like it when combined with a leg of lamb roasting in the oven, but I'm not overly fussy.  Ground lamb would work, right?  So I made these rolls to have with the Moussaka the other night.

Actually, I roasted the garlic over a week ago.  I had 16 heads of garlic that I sliced in half, laid out on some foil on a baking sheet, drizzled with olive oil, covered with more foil, and baked at about 350 for an hour or so. 

I let the garlic cool a bit

before squeezing it, now soft, sweet, and golden, into a bowl. 

Then I poured all the garlic into my food processor

and pulsed it til I had a relatively smooth paste. 

I froze most of it and kept some in the fridge for near-future use.

~~~~~

The day before I made my rolls (and moussaka), I added some flour and water to my sourdough starter to get it activated.

The day OF the baking, I made a batch of basic, easy sourdough bread - a 2-loaf batch. 

While the dough was rising, I went out to the garden and picked a few sprigs of rosemary and rinsed them in some water to get rid of any dirt or bugs. 

Then I picked the leaves off of the slightly woody stems and chopped them up into little pieces and mixed them with some of the roasted garlic paste.

Here's the dough after the first rise.

 

Gorgeous, isn't it?  I locked the bowl into place on my stand mixer and, using the dough hook, stirred it down.  Just wanted to share with you the lovely gluten strands pulling away from the side of the bowl....

   

Cool, huh?

I added the remaining flour and baking soda, and kneaded the dough by hand until it was - as they say - smooth and elastic.  I divided it in half, shaped one into a loaf and put it in my lightly-greased loaf pan.  The other half was patted flat on the counter and gently stretched and pressed into a vaguely rectangular shape.

 

You can see where this is going, right?  Next thing I did was to smear the garlic/rosemary mixture on the dough...

 

And then - yes - I rolled it up tightly...

 

Just like when I make cinnamon rolls.

 

I sort of pinched the edge against the rest of the roll, then sliced it into 16 pieces.  I placed them all in a greased 10" cake pan and let them rise for about half an hour before putting them into a 400 degree oven.

 

After 35 minutes, they were done. 

 

And I served them, still warm, with dinner.

Here's a shot of them - and the loaf of bread - on my dining room table, along with other bits and pieces of the day. 

 

They were pretty good - everyone liked them.  I think next time I'll add more of the garlic/rosemary mixture and maybe mix in some grated parmesan as well. 

They did, however, go very nicely with the moussaka.