Rosemary and orange. Is that a good combo? It sounds like it should work, but I can’t remember that I had tasted it before. That was my reaction when I read a recipe for dinner rolls from a Swedish baker named Jan Hedh. I love rosemary in bread, but orange? I was not that sure. Bread that contains whole pieces of fruit is something I try to avoid. I don’t even like raisins in my bread. That is, by the way, a big problem at Christmas if you live in Sweden. EVERY traditional Swedish Christmas bread seems to be loaded with raisins.

But this recipe was different. It contained something called orange paste. That sounded much better, so I decided to give it a try.
The author had used commercial yeast in the original recipe. But I’m a sourdough-guy, so I decided to replace it with a wheat starter.
The hydration of the dough was also very low, only 45%. I can understand why, because it contains a lot of olive oil. 100 gram to 500-gram flour. A little bit too much for my taste, so I replaced the half of it with water.

It turned out to be a good decision. I decided to use a stretch and fold technique for this dough, instead of running it in a dough mixer. It was not that easy to mix all that oil into the dough, even if I had reduced it by half.

I also decided to reduce the amount of rosemary and orange paste by half. You normally serve dinner rolls with food, and I don’t want the bread standing out too much. It should be a complement to the main dish, but it should not take over the whole show. But if you want to try the original recipe, you only have to double the amount indicated in the ingredient list.

The Orange paste was, by the way, a quite ingenious idea. You only have to zest an orange and mix it with sugar by kneading it with the backside of a spoon or a palette knife. I can think of a lot of ways to use this nice ingredient. Drizzle it over a cup of vanilla ice cream together with some rum? No?
Yeah, I know. This is a recipe for bread. Not some dessert for people with a fondness for alcohol (but admit that it sounds good).

Sometimes I don’t want big holes in my bread. Don’t get me wrong. I also love the feeling of cutting up a perfect ciabatta and see the lovely crumb with big holes surrounded by a chewy and crispy crust. Chewy and crispy sounds like a paradox, but that’s how I experience a well-baked sourdough Ciabatta. Add tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, and some olive oil, and you have something divine.

But I don’t want that on my breakfast plate on a Monday morning. I am not ready for divine things at 6:00 am. That early I want something a little more down to earth. Something that suits my mood a bit better. I want a hearty sandwich with cheese, red pepper, and a reasonable amount of butter. That can be tricky to accomplish with a Ciabatta, especially when you feel more like a Zombie than a living creature. The crumb of a ciabatta can be compared to a sinkhole. The butter just disappears. Somewhere.

I love butter, but there have to be some limits. So the sourdough bread with toasted oats in this post will be a bit less extraordinary. When it comes to the size of the holes, that will say. When it comes to taste, there will be no concessions. It contains both sourdough, whole rye, and roasted oats. Especially the toasted oats give extra oomph to the taste.
Roasted oats are easy to do. Just keep an eye on the roasting process. Spread the oats on a baking tray and roast them in the oven until they have got a dark brown color. That can happen very quickly, so don’t go away and do something else in the meantime, or you might come back to a smoking inferno. Let the roasted oatmeal cool and mix with a food processor or a stick blender to a somewhat coarse flour.