Olives

I recently asked TFL how to score Richard Bertinet's Pain aux Olives to achieve the effect shown in his book, Dough: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/keyword/bread-scoring-score-richard-bertinet-pains-gourmands-2006-larousse-olive-bread

I made a version of it this weekend, and they were right: It's rolled and the scored on the vertical.

The original recipe is a straight dough: combine ingredients, bulk ferment, roll dough into a long, flat rectangle, spread with olive paste, roll up, shape roll into bâtard, proof, score on the vertical, bake.

I modified it to use a sourdough preferment (52% prefermented flour) and retardation. Day 1: Make preferment. Day 2: Make dough, bulk ferment, shape, retard. Day 3: Bake. I didn't change the quantities of the original recipe, only the methods.

How did I like it? A lot!

I wrote in my journal: "Favorite bread in the whole wide world = Olive Bread."

Formula.

[Click image for larger version.]

Process.

[Click image for larger version.]

Pictures.

1. Dough scored on the vertical.

2. The result after a 40-minute bake.

3. Here's a side-by-side. Bertinet's is on left. Not to scale: Bertinet's would be 1/3 the size, as he makes three small loaves out of the 875 grams of dough. I made one loaf.

4. The crumb.

Files.

1. Download a copy of the formula in PDF format.

2. Download a copy of the process in PDF format.

3. Download a copy of the spreadsheet in Excel 2007 format. The spreadsheet is editable, so you can use it to scale quantites up or down. You can edit the orange cells; all others cells are automatically calculated from formulae.

This week our bread to have with soup at lunch time will be olive bread.  I've been wanting to try this bread again from the Il Fornaio Baking Book by Franco Galli for quite sometime.  I made two changes to the recipe as given.  I used 1/4 cup of my 70% hydration whole wheat sourdough starter instead of the 1/4 cup biga.  I also used kalamata olives instead of green olives as my husband doesn't really care for the green olives. 

The loaf had good oven spring, so I am hopeful that I might even have an open crumb in this bread, which would be a first for me.  We shall see tomorrow when we cut into the loaf. 

To be honest, I hadn’t a clue what I felt like baking this weekend. My mind wandered over many possibilities. In the end my inspiration for this bake came from Nat. Though she is an avid admirer of all things bread, when I put the question to her about this weekend's bake, the answer came swiftly …

Olive bread!

Of course…

…  how could I have forgotten Nat the Rat’s most favoured of all loaves.

The strange thing is, I can’t remember the last time I made an olive bread …

I do however, remember the last time I ate olive bread. While we were on holidays in New South Wales, we took a day trip to a small town called Bellingen. In this beautiful little hideaway I tasted my first EVER woodfired sourdough. It was an olive bread, baked by a small organic bakery called Hearthfire …. It was the  most amazing olive bread I have ever tasted. A crumb that melted in your mouth, flecks of herbs throughout and large chunks of olives. We almost finished half of it with a spicy pumpkin hummos whilst picnicking by a small creek. On my return to Brisbane I even called the owner of the bakery to thank them for the amazing bread …

I think that delicious experience has scared me off making my own olive bread … until now.

When it came time to start prepping and sourcing ingredients to compliment the kalamata olives in my own bread, I needed to look no further than our front porch to find inspiration. Growing in small pots we have sage, rosemary, basil and thyme. Only a few hours later the dehydrator filled the kitchen with the aromas of drying herbs. Some lemon zest, (courtesy of the Tartine olive bread formula) and I had everything I needed.

Olive and Herb Levain

Formula

Method

   1. Autolyse flour and water 45 mins

   2. Add levain and knead 5-10 mins. Add salt and knead a further 5-10 mins. Gently mix in olives, herbs and lemon zest.

   3. Bulk ferment 2.5 hours with two stretch and folds at 30 mins in the first hour.

   4. Preshape and bench rest for 20 mins

   5. Shape and proof for 2.5 hours

   6. Bake in steamed oven for 10 mins at 250°C then 30 mins at 200°C

As you can imagine our kitchen smells heavenly this afternoon.

The crusts chorused loudly when they were removed from the oven while I fought the growing temptation to pick at protruding olives.

The crumb is soft and anything but chewy with olives nestled and peering out of every slice.

For me it won’t surpass the olive bread from our holidays but I am pretty sure I have made Nat’s weekend.

All the best,

Phil

There are two things members of our patchwork family have in common - we love good food and we hate olives! Even the pickiest of our kids, Valerie, producer of the famous "square mouth" whenever I made her try at least one bite before she said she didn't like it; and Francesca who ordered "just white rice" when we ate at a restaurant, ended up as foodies. Valerie even became a chef!
The Andersons and their offspring pick olives off pizzas, and leave them untouched in the salad bowl. They don't order tapenade and don't drink martinis. But then something strange happened...
Knowing that a lot of people are olive fans and crave them in all kinds of foods, I looked for an olive bread recipe to satisfy those die-hards. I found one in my favorite "Brot aus Suedtirol" and decided to give it a try, tweaking it a bit (using pate fermentee and overnight refrigeration).
I had a long struggle forcing slippery olives into the dough (maybe they sensed my negative vibes). My first batch of "Pane di Olive" looked like misshapen scones, with dark bruises (from my abuse?), but they didn't smell bad. With some apprehension and no great expectation I bit in an olive laden roll. Took another unbelieving bite and was deeply shocked - the olive bread tasted good, really good, incredibly good!
I gave one to Richard, the most willing guinea pig of all husbands, who eyed it with distrust. "You should probably call that 'Malfatti' (= badly made) he suggested, but then obediently tried the olive roll. In no time it was gone!