Olive My Dreams
This bread taught me a lot about baking commercially. A bakery in town had a Kalamata Olive loaf and they charged a lot for it and didn't have as many olives in it as I'd have liked. When I began baking commercially I realized that as a hobbyist I paid more for the olives in my loaf of bread than the other baker was selling his loaf for.
As a commercial baker, I needed a compromise. I wanted more olives, but I wanted to sell an affordable loaf. We found mixing Kalamata olives and California ripe olives worked very nicely. Our blind taste panels actually preferred the olive blend to the straight Kalamata olive bread. If you decide to make this with all Kalamata olives, cut the salt back by about 1/3, as the Kalamata olives add a lot of salt themselves.
It delighted me that our customers loved our olive breads. BreadS? Yeah, we had about 4 or 5 olive breads. The other recipes are in our forthcoming cookbook on Flavored Breads. With luck, it will be out before Christmas.
As usual, this makes two 1.5 pound loaves.
Ingredients:
| Volumetric Measure (Cups) | Ingredient | Grams | Baker's Percentage (4) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 2/3 Cups | Water | 390 Grams | 54% |
| 7/8 Cup | Active Sourdough Starter | 230 Grams | 31% |
| 1/2 Cup | Kalamata Olives, whole, pitted and drained (1) | 73 Grams | 10% |
| 1 1/4 Cup | California ripe black olives, whole, pitted, and drained (1) | 150 Grams | 20% |
| 5 2/3 Cups | Bread Flour | 730 Grams | 100% |
| 2 tsp | Salt | 14 Grams | 1.9% |
| 1 1/2 tsp | Dried Rosemary (2) | 1.5 Grams | 0.2% |
| 1 1/4 tsp | Crushed Red Peppers | 3 Grams | 0.4% |
- You can vary the ratio between the Kalamata and California black
olives to suit your taste. Some of our tasters found the all Kalamata to be too strong and the all California to be too bland. Our accountant found the all Kalamata to be too pricey. Play with the olive mix until you make a bread you love. - If you can use find and use fresh rosemary, that helps the taste of the bread considerably. Use about 6 grams or 2 TBSP of fresh rosemary.
If you are kneading the dough by hand or with a mixer, add the olives at the end of the dough development. Then cover the dough and allow it to double in size.
If you are developing the dough with the stretch and fold technique,
add the olives at the start of the dough development. When the stretch and folds are complete, allow the dough to rest another hour.
When the rise or rest are completed, form a loaf, cover, and allow to rise until doubled. Bake on tiles in a preheated 375F/190C oven for about 40 minutes.
One other thing that this bread taught us was that a catchy name helps. Rosemary olive bread sold, but not as well as "Olive My Dreams". Each of our olive breads had a punny (or is that punishing) name. It helped. Really.
I love this bread. It is my one grandaughter’s, son and DIL’s favourite loaf. I sometimes do not make it for awhile and then I make it again and wonder why I waited so long.
On a recent visit by the granddaughters, on their last few days, I asked each of them to specify a favourite meal that I would make them in the next few days. The 9 year old, said, I just want olive bread. I will eat anything you make for the meal, but I just want the olive bread. Once it was baked and ready to slice, she did not even want butter on it, just the bread, several slices in a row!.
Another time I made it, my sister arrived and had not eaten lunch yet. I made her and my BIL a grilled cheese sandwich using this bread. He took one bite, looked at me and said, why does it taste so good? lol.
Hi Sonya,
Thanks for the nice note! It is a GREAT bread! By itself, with butter, or as a grilled cheese sandwich, it’s all good! What kind of olives, and what olive mix did you use?
If you like this flavored bread, there are more wonderful recipes in our Flavored Breads Cookbook, available from Mike’s Bread Shoppe!
Best wishes,
Mike
Hi Mike:
I buy pitted Kalamata olives and so far have just make it with them. I may try some other olives as part of the mix next time. I slice the olives longitudinally into quarters, so it spreads them out in the bread a bit. We had my nephew up at the cottage on the weekend and I had a plaid sourdough to start and he said, oh, is this the olive bread! lol, I said no, but the next little loaf we were eating from, was the olive and he was loving it as well, toasted with butter!.