One of the best things about having a cooking blog is that when people see a cool recipe they don’t necessarily have the time to try, they pass it to me. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy that they trust me with this thing they think they’ll love.
When my cousin sent me this video of rosemary garlic focaccia muffins, I was sold. The flavors seemed worth the effort it’d take to get it right. At any given moment, I have rosemary in my garden and an absolutely unhinged amount of garlic in my home, so the necessary ingredients were present and accounted for. The cousin who sent me the video was hosting Thanksgiving, so I figured I’d bring these up to surprise her.
Well, reader, I GOT THEM RIGHT. I bought new yeast to mitigate the possibility that the yeast has been the problem in the past (though I think we’ve all known each other long enough to know it was probably a skill issue).
Here is the recipe I followed from Salt n’ Sprinkles for the rosemary garlic focaccia muffins. I didn’t make any tweaks at all so I don’t really feel right posting it here – plus, I want to expand on some of the lessons I learned while on this adventure.
What to Consider When Making Bread:
In addition to Salt n Sprinkles having an excellent guide on why your dough might not rise, here are a few takeaways while I baked this:
- Make sure the water is the right temperature for mixing the yeast: 105 – 110 degrees Fahrenheit is ideal to activate dry yeast.
- Use sugar instead of honey. Yeast needs to chomp on some sugar to activate, which is why you’ll see honey, sugar, maple syrup, or something similar in every bread recipe. I realized while making this that using granulated sugar is the move – honey is too hard to get exactly right, especially since I assume the bread will be angry with me if I get anything even a little wrong. What about that coating of honey left on the spoon? WHAT IF I NEED THAT TO MAKE IT WORK?! Friends, that’s why sugar is the answer: just measure and dump it in.
- Make the space a “proofing” temperature. The first proof for this recipe is done overnight in the fridge, which tickles the part of my brain that loses interest in long-haul projects before they’re done. The second proof is a two-hour rise, for which I cracked the oven slightly and ran it at the lowest temperature to bring the room up to 76. I then put the dough in the cupcake pans in the warmest part of the room. Next time I’ll try one of these bread dough proofing methods from Taste of Home.
- Timing of the rosemary/garlic mix: Before you pop the muffins in the oven, you have to drizzle them with a rosemary garlic topping. It’s minced rosemary and garlic quickly sautéed in a 1/4C of shimmering extra virgin olive oil (I’m sure there’s a technical chefy word for it. I do not know what that word is). Anyway, I did that part around 20 minutes before the dough was done with its second proof, because I was paranoid about putting hot oil on an unbaked dough. There was time for the mixture to cool down ahead of drizzling it on, and everything baked up evenly.
The last lesson is the hardest of all: HAVE PATIENCE. I spent a lot of time looking up technique information to make sure I did this the best way that I could, and it paid off.
They were a great surprise, a hit at dinner, and I had the opportunity to be insufferably smug about conquering this particular frontier. 10/10, do recommend not giving up.
And please, please, please go make the rosemary garlic focaccia muffins from Salt n Sprinkles for yourself!
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