Can anyone share a formula for a truly fantastic olive bread? The baker at my farmers market makes the most delicious kalamata olive bread. It's soft and chewy inside with tons of kalamatas. The crust is golden brown and very crisp. This bread is fantastic eaten out of hand, toasted, for sandwiches, or my favorite, for egg-in-a-hole. The bread itself is not very sour so I doubt it's a true sourdough. I sent the baker an email hoping she could point me in the right direction for a formula (yeast raised? starter based?). I wasn't asking for a recipe, just for some pointers, but all she said was, "come to the next market and we can chat." Well, I want olive bread now and the market doesn't open for the season until May!

Any ideas would be welcome. :) Elissa

I've been out of action for a while because my MacBook crash,  I couldn't manage my photos without my Mac,  and therefore have been busy baking, cooking,  taking pictures but not updating.

I just got back to Shanghai from Chinese New Year Holiday.  With another 2 days before work starts,  I have time on my hand to bake.  My son requested for his all time favorite - Olive Bread.  I decided to go with Daniel Leader's Local Bread - Fresh Herb Twist Recipe.  I like it because its simple,  yet,  the taste is good.  I've baked this bread twice before,  with dried herbs and with fresh herbs.  We decided the dried herbs taste better.  The taste of the fresh herbs was over empowering the bread taste.

This time,  I doubled the recipe so that I can make one with Herb and another one with Olives.

It is indeed,  1 dough,  2 flavours - For the Herb Bread,  I split into 2 dough and did a twist,  For the Olive Bread,  I kept it in a Brotform.  Each of the Bread weights about 920g.

I did notice that somehow,  with this bread,  according to the book,  I baked it at 220-230 degrees celsius,  425 F,  40 minutes,  somehow,  the lower part of the bread remains a little more most.  Why is that so?  

A few things that has been going through my mind as I cut the bread:  I've got my baking stone,  heated up properly.  Perhaps the temperature is not hot enough?  I've baked 10 minutes longer than the required time of 30 minutes,  timing should be alright.....

Well, any advice will be appreciated.

www.foodforthoughts.jlohcook.com

I've been wanting to bake a fougasse for a long time and finally did it.  I was baking Hamelman's olive levain and saw that one suggested shaping was as a fougasse.  I saw that he also had a separate fougasse recipe, but I had already created the levain for the first bread.  As I usually do when baking a recipe for the first time, I read at least 2 or 3 other authors, hope to find a photo of the finished product, and then proceed.  (I guess I'm a careful person in general and pretty frugal as well.)  So I realized, from reading others' fougasse recipes, that I had to add olive oil (mentioned in both Baking with Julia and Nancy Silverton's Breads from La Brea Bakery).  So I added 4 TBSP olive oil and also 1/2 tsp. instant yeast to the final dough.  I also reduced slightly the amount of olives, not very significant, but used 7 oz. instead of the 8 oz. in his recipe.  For shaping, I had seen a color photo in Dorie Greenspan's Baking with Julia and used that as a guide.  I was more than satisfied with the results, which yielded 2 large loaves, each weighing about 1 1/2 lbs.  I brought one to my book club dinner, and people couldn't get enough of it.  There's another in my freezer, soon to join me on a visit to friends in the L.A. area.  

Here's my update of Hamelman's recipe for Olive Levain (pp. 178-9):

OVERALL FORMULA:

Bread flour                   1 lb, 12.8 oz

Whole-wheat flour         3.2 oz

Instant yeast                1/2 tsp

Water                          1 lb, 4.2 oz

Salt                             .5 oz

Olives, pitted                7 oz (I used Trader Joe's large Kalamatas, cut in half and, very important, dried very well.)

Olive oil                       4 TBSP extra-virgin

Rosemary needles, minced, about 2 TBSP

TOTAL YIELD:               3 lb, 11.7 oz plus olive oil

LIQUID LEVAIN BUILD

Bread flour                   5.8 oz (1 3/8 cups)

Water                          7.2 oz (7/8 cup)

Mature culture (liquid)    14.2 oz

FINAL DOUGH

Bread flour                    1 lb, 7 oz (5 1/4 cups)

Whole-wheat flour          3.2 oz (3/4 cup)

Instant yeast                 1/2 tsp

Water                           13 oz (1 5/8 cups)

Salt                              .5 oz (2 1/2 tsp)  

Liquid levain                  13 oz (all less 2 TBSP + 1 tsp)

Olives, pitted                  7 oz (1 1/4 cups, packed) 

Rosemary needles, minced, about 2 TBSP

LIQUID LEVAIN:  Make the final build 12-16 hrs. before the final mix; let stand in a covered container at about 70 deg. F. (mine fermented overnight for about 14 hrs at 60 degrees; it seemed fine).

MIXING:  Add all ingredients to the mixing bowl, except for the olives [and the olive oil--my addition].  In spiral mixer [mine is planetary--K/A Pro 6] mix on first speed for 3 minutes, adjusting hydration as necessary.  Turn the mixer to second speed, drizzling in the olive oil, and mix approximately 3-4 minutes more.  Dough should have moderate gluten development.  Add the olives, distributing them in by hand to keep them from getting smashed and coloring the dough purple (a little bit of purple seems OK).  

BULK FERMENTATION:  2 hours.  (Remember, I have added instant yeast.)

FOLDING:  Fold once after 1 hour or, if the dough seems to need more strength, fold twice at 50-minute intervals.

DIVIDING AND PRESHAPING:  Divide the dough into 1.5-lb. pieces.  Lightly round dough on a floured surface with seams down.  Let dough relax for about 20 minutes.  Shape the dough into an oval shape about 1 1/2-inches thick, using a rolling pin if necessary.

FINAL FERMENTATION:  About 1 1/4 hours at 67 deg. F.  (You should adjust time to your ambient temperature.)

SHAPING AND BAKING:  Preheat oven with stone to 500 deg. F.  Place a pan with about 2 inches of hot water on the rack below the baking rack; it will be steaming by the time you load the dough.  When fougasse has risen, final shaping occurs.  Pick up dough and stretch it gently so it's about half again as long as it was.  Place it on baking sheet without sides or a peel lined with parchment.  Shape it into a long "tombstone" shape, the base about half the length of the height.  Using a pizza wheel or a good-sized paring knife, cut slits as shown in the photo, and cut into the perimeter to suggest a leaf shape, also as below.  Next, widen the slits with your hands, which takes some time, so they won't close up when the loaves go into the oven.  (I have only one oven, so I kept the second loaf, preshaped and covered with a plastic trash bag--puffed up with air inside so it wouldn't stick to the dough--in my garage while the first loaf was being slashed and baked; it was a cool day so the garage was about 55 degrees.)  When done with the cutting, brush top with extra-virgin olive oil and scatter minced rosemary needles or minced herb of choice on top, lightly sticking it on with fingers if necessary.

Steam oven before loading the dough onto the stone and again after it's in the oven (I sprayed with a garden pump sprayer every 2 minutes for the first 10 minutes, covering the window with a towel each time).  After 10 minutes, remove the aluminum pan below the baking rack and turn down the heat to 460 deg. F. (I actually baked with convection setting, which is 435 deg. F.  Either way seems to work fine.)  Check doneness after a total of 35 minutes.  You want a full bake but not overbaking, as the loaf is thin.  Bake for a total of 35-40 minutes, again using your judgment and knowing how your oven bakes.  When done, remove to a cooling rack.  While loaf is still hot, brush again with extra-virgin olive oil.  Enjoy!!

This is a late bake of Hamelman's "BREAD" under levain breads. It is 90% White flour vs. 10% Wholwheat with 230g of Pitted olives.

The loaves were fermented for 2.5 hours bulk, and immedietly retarded for 8 hours overnight at 50F (10c). I suspect the crumb will be tighter than i wish, because i believe the loaves needed an additional 1 hour fermentation prior to retarding.

Any ways, today i'll cut into them and find out!

khalid

I'm back from more than 2 weeks business trip and couldn't wait to start on the Jeffrey Hamelman's challenge.  Well,  it didn't quite happen.  With my failed attempt of the Jeffrey Hamelman's Baguette with Poolish,  and failed attempt to make my own malt flour,  still looking for high gluten flour for my Jeffrey Hamelman's bagel,  well,  I adhered to my son's appeal for Olive Bread.  He simply loves olives.  

At least my Olive Bread turns out as expected, although I thought for a moment, that I lost my touch on shaping the dough as the olive started spilling out,  making it difficult to fold the dough without affecting bubbles.  

It turns out surprisingly soft and chewy on the inside.

See recipe - click here. Olive Bread

Hey All,

Just wanted to share with you some recent bakes.  Enjoy!  Sorry no recipes.  Please bug me if you want any of them.

Tim

4/2/10 - Pane Casereccio di Genzano, Poilane style miche, Olive Bread.  The olive bread did not turn out well...  Sorry no crumbshots for these.

4/4/10 - Cottage Loaves

4/6/10 - Pane di Matera (Durum bread).  This is my poor attempt at this bread.  It's really difficult to shape.  Mine looked horrible, but they tasted pretty good...  More info here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ng4jnGnLTb4 and here: http://mollicadipane.blogspot.com/2008/12/il-pane-di-matera_7869.html

4/7/10 - Breadcrumb Bread...  This is another attempt at doing the Pane di Matera shape, very slightly more successfully, but not quite there yet...

4/8/10 - Olive Bread...  Sorry no crumbshot...  My friends said it tasted really good...

4/11/10 - Pizza.  Mushroom, and Artichoke, and Jamon Serrano...

I decided to try making a savory olive bread using my usual sourdough recipe, and just adding herbs and chopped Queen olives.  I would occasionally buy an olive baguette from our nearest supermarket, until they stopped making them.  It was a good thing I only bought them occasionally, they were delicious and somewhat addictive.  Anyway, having enjoyed getting the hang of basic sourdough bread, I decided this would be the perfect base for an olive bread.  Because I have lots of fresh Rosemary growing in the garden, that seemed like an obvious and delicious addition, and who can eat Olives and Rosemary without a little Oregano?  Anyway, I mixed it all up yesterday morning, let it triple over about 4 hours, shaped and popped it in the fridge.  I re-shaped just before bed, and baked this morning.  All I can say is YUM!!!  I don't know whether this loaf will make it past today...

Recipe and Method:

1 Cup of high hydration starter directly from fridge

1 Cup of freshly ground whole wheat flour

1.5 Cups of strong White Bread Flour

1 scant  tsp salt

Handful of pitted sliced Queen Olives

Handful of finely chopped Rosemary

Pinch of Oregano

1 Tbsp Olive Oil

A few splashes of warm water

I mixed everything up in a bowl with a stiff plastic spatula, then turned it out and kneaded for 10 minutes until smooth and elastic.  Placed back in oiled bowl and covered with clingflim, and left in a slightly warmed oven for 4-5 hours.  By then it had nearly tripled so I shaped into a boule, placed on parchment paper on a baking tray and put in the fridge.  Reshaped at 10pm and put back in the fridge.  Took out of the fridge and turned on the oven with roasting pan and stone inside at 8am.  Baked in preheated oven under the roasting pan for 20 minutes at 250C, then reduced temperature to 190C, removed roasting pan and baked another 15 minutes.  I let it cool on the counter and cut when just barely warm.  Yum yum yum!  Will try REALLY hard to wait until lunch to eat another slice......

I am making this bread tonight to bake tomorrow - in his recipe, he says the bread profits from retarding the shaped loaves, which I will do

but it does not say if they can be baked straight from the fridge, or if they should stay at room temp for a few hours.

has anoone made this bread? I think I will remove it from the fridge and leave it for 3 hours over the counter, since I've been doing this for his Vermont sourdough and works fine, but if anyone has specific instructions, I am all ears!

Thanks!

This is from yesterday's baking session using the Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes recipes -- an epi and 2 small loaves of olive bread using some totally delicious kalamata olives I had to scour the city to find. What's wrong with these grocers? The dough for the olive bread was 11 days old. Great oven spring!

Baking session on 2/13/08. Kalamata olive bread and a pain d'epi.