I’m overwintering my two rosemary plants in my kitchen window (directions for succeeding at overwintering rosemary via Kathy Purdy over at Cold Climate Gardening) and I’ve been snipping from them all winter, adding rosemary to pot roasts, pork chops, and boiled potatoes (along with parsley and thyme that I’m also growing in the kitchen window.) I have been on a bread-baking kick since late summer, but I was in the mood for something a little different. A little searching turned up this easy recipe for rosemary focaccia. It was a cinch to make, and we ate the focaccia with dinner that night. Leftover focaccia, sliced cross-wise, made for a killer turkey melt the next day.

Ingredients:

For dough:

3 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (plus more for your work surface when kneading)

1 teaspoon white sugar or honey

1 teaspoon Kosher salt

1 tablespoon active dry yeast

1 cup warm water

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 egg

For topping:

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary (or 1 teaspoon dried)

Combine one cup of flour, sugar, salt and yeast in a bowl. Mix well and set aside. Add olive oil to the warm water, and add yeast and egg. Mix with the flour mixture. Blend either by hand or with an electric mixer at low speed until the mixture is uniformly moist, then continue to mix for another two minutes. Stir in 2 more cups of flour while mixing.

Place dough on a floured surface, and knead in the last 1/2 cup of flour. Cover dough with a bowl and let it sit for five minutes.

Place the dough on a greased cookie sheet or pizza pan, and stretch it out to a 12-inch circle. Drizzle with the olive oil, and rub the oil across the entire surface of the dough. Cover with a towel and set in a warm place for 30 minutes to rise.

Uncover the dough and use your fingers to poke holes into the dough at about 1 inch intervals. Drizzle the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil, then sprinkle the rosemary on top.

Bake at 400 degrees for 17 to 20 minutes, until golden brown.  Cool, and devour

You can jazz this up any way you want: add shaved Parmesan cheese to the top, some chopped sundried tomatoes in the dough and on top, and any herbs you like. I’ve also seen recipes for olive focaccia that looked really good (if you like olives.)

I like recipes like this that allow me to use food I’ve grown myself. Even though it was only a tablespoon of fresh rosemary, there was a certain satisfaction in knowing that part of our meal (and lunch the next day) came from something I babied with my own two hands — even in the middle of winter.