Recipe: Olive Bread

Recipe Source: Ingram, Christine and Jennie Shapter.  Bread: The Breads of the World and How to Bake Them At Home.  Anness Publishing, London, 2007 p. 173

Many years ago, far longer than I'm going to admit to, I lived with a pair of roommates in Brighton.  As roommate situations go, it wasn't too bad.  We're still friends however many years later, although I won't pretend that it was sweetness and light all the time.  Not too far from our apartment was a natural-foods supermarket that eventually got swallowed up by Whole Foods.  At the time it was still separate from WFM, though, and they made the most amazing olive bread.  I could - and did - eat an entire loaf by myself, in one sitting.  Of course, they don't make it anymore, and even if they did I no longer live anywhere near there.  I've always kind of treasured the fantasy of making it myself at home, though, and last Sunday I made my first attempt.

I made a few changes.  Some of them are procedural; I have a stand mixer and I have no qualms about using it.  The original recipe called for easy-blend dried yeast.  I didn't have any, and used regular active dry yeast from a jar.  All in all, I think this bread worked well, although it wasn't pretty and certainly wasn't just like my wonderful Kalamata Olive Bread.  But it was a Kalamata Olive bread, and it was pretty tasty.

Olive Bread (Serves 8 - 10; approx. $1.05/serving for 8)

2 1/2 cups bread flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1 teaspoon sugar

2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Scant 1 cup lukewarm water

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 cup pitted Kalamata olives, roughly chopped

Equipment:

• Baking sheet
• Stand mixer with the dough hook
• Plastic wrap

1. Lightly grease the baking sheet.
2. Combine the yeast and the sugar in the warm water.  Let sit five minutes, until nice and frothy.
3. Add the water mixture and the oil to the flours.  Mix to form a soft dough, then knead 8 - 10 minutes, either by hand (hah!) or in the stand mixer.
4. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit an hour, or until doubled in size.
5. Turn out onto a floured surface and punch down.
6. Roughly flatten the dough and sprinkle the olives on top.
7. Fold up and knead the bread (by hand this time) to distribute the olives.  
8. Let rest 5 minutes, then shape into an oval.  Place on the baking sheet.
9. Make 6 deep cuts on the loaf.  Let rise 30 - 45 minutes, or until doubled in size.
10. Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 400 degrees. 
11. Bake 35 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool. 

Comments

[Alisa - Frugal Foodie]

I can't remember the last time I had olive bread, what a great idea; I need to fire up the oven!

[The Duo Dishes]

Olive bread is mighty good stuff. Slather with goat cheese and a couple of sundried tomatoes, and it's heaven in each bite.

[Angie's Recipes]

The smell and taste of freshly baked bread is a hard thing to resist. Hmm....I every often just had two slices of bread topped with mature Gouda for the lunch, and with a glass of red wine..... simple things are just beautiful.

[Natasha - 5 Star Foodie]

This olive bread looks wonderful! We recently had olive breads at a few really nice restaurants, it's very popular, it seems!

[Laura @ Hungry and Frozen]

This sounds delicious. I love kalamata olives, and it is definitely not as hard as it sounds to eat a whole loaf of bread in one sitting :)

[vincent]

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[Fearless Kitchen]

Laura - I could have stood to use a few more olives, but I couldn't stop eating them!

Natasha - Good. More olive bread!

Angie - Mmmm... fresh bread and gouda.... mmmm....

Duo - I think you've just described a little piece of Heaven.

Alisa - Good plan :) More olive bread for everyone!