I baked some rosemary-infused sourdough from the Hungry Ghost Bread Cookbook.

It’s a pretty basic sourdough, with some olive oil and a gigantic amount of rosemary mixed right in.

• White bread flour
• 75% water
• 14.4% dried rosemary
• 12% starter
• 7% olive oil
• 3% salt

Starting with the as-written 840g of flour, 14.4% comes to 121g of rosemary. Dried rosemary. Which is more powerful, gram for gram, than fresh rosemary.

I failed to consider just how much rosemary this was when I started mixing up the dough. All the rosemary I had in the house, dried and fresh, came to just 20 grams or so. And I put it all in. The resulting loaf was, by my lights, powerfully rosemary scented and flavored. I can’t fathom what it would be like to actually include a whopping 120 grams of rosemary. At grocery-store prices, 120g of rosemary would cost me $15 or more. I actually wonder if the 120g in the book was an error. But the book’s fennel flavored bread recipe is similarly extravagant with the fennel.

I got the book as a holiday gift and I’ve enjoyed it. This loaf was among the best I’ve made. My family gobbled it up. I’m hoping to try some of the other ideas in the book: The fennel bread, the fig and sage bread, etc.