Olive Bread

I have a cookbook called Organic Kitchen that separates the recipes by season, using seasonal ingredients. I got it at a moving sale at a Barnes and Noble in Augusta last year. I got a lot of cookbooks, actually, for about a quarter of the cover price. Eric and I walked out of the bookstore with at least 30 books. I'm going to cook some of the fall recipes, and I'll tell you about them, because many of the dishes are ones I haven't seen anywhere else.

There is also a "Sauces, salsas, chutneys and breads" section in the back, where this olive bread is featured.

It requires two rises, so plan accordingly timewise.

Recipe:

2 red onions, thinly sliced

2 T olive oil

2 cups pitter black or green olives

2 oz fresh yeast (I used 2.5 t instant yeast)

7 cups white bread flour 1.5 t salt

3 T each roughly chopped parsley, cilantro and mint (I didn't use any mint)

So, fry the onions til soft and roughly chop the onions. Dissolve the yeast in 1 cup warm water.

Put the flour, salt and herbs in a large bowl with the olives and fried onions and add the yeast mixture. Mix well, adding enough water to make a soft dough. Knead for about 10 min.

Place in a clean bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let stand in a warm place until doubled in bulk:

Lightly grease two baking sheets. Turn the dough onto a floured surface (parchment paper is great for this if you don't feel like cleaning your counter yet AGAIN), and cut in half. Shape into two rounds* and place on the baking sheets. Cover the dough with lightly oiled plastic wrap and let stand until doubled.

Preheat to 425 degrees.

Slash the tops of the dough with a knife:

Bake for 40 min, or until the loaves sound hollow when thumped on the bottom. This is a very moist bread, so I think you can let them get even browner than I did.

* When shaping boules, or round loaves, you need to create tension on the top of the dough so it'll rise evenly, so pull the dough around and into the middle bottom of the dough until the top is tight-ish. Pinch closed the bottom of the dough. It's hard to explain without showing you...

It's also important to slash the top so that when the bread is cooking the imperfections will let themselves out in the slashes instead of bulging out the sides or something. You can tell I know a lot about this, right?