makes 1 loaf
Olive bread wasn’t on the menu when I first opened Bien Cuit, but people kept asking me for one. I’m a great believer in listening to customers, but instead of giving them exactly what they asked for, I tried to give them something even better than they imagined. I decided to use the same dough as my 30-Hour Sourdough Loaf. Could you make an olive bread with another dough? Yes, but I think the acidity of the 30-hour loaf balances the saltiness of the olives (more on that shortly), and the chew really makes the savory, briny flavor and soft texture of the olives pop.
If you’ve ever had a pizza covered with insipid-tasting canned black olives, you know that the wrong olive is worse than no olive. Please allow me to liberate you from some of the guesswork of choosing the right olives for this recipe. First, you want olives that are brined without vinegar. The acid fights the dough and confuses the flavor. I tried at least a dozen different olives in this bread before I settled on a firm, green, salt-brined olive. Varieties include Castelvetrano or Halkidiki (a great word, don’t you think?). I like the way these olives taste when baked in the dough. Their floral fragrance infuses the crumb.
You’ll notice that I bake this bread slightly longer than either the 30-Hour Sourdough Loaf or the Raisin Walnut Bread. This is a good lesson in adapting to your ingredients. As the olives bake, they add moisture to the dough, making it wetter and requiring a longer bake time. If you were to bake this exactly the same as the 30-hour loaf, the crumb would be denser and the overall rise of the loaf would be less than desired. When we make this bread, I tell my staff to bake it until it’s très bien cuit, a truly dark mahogany.