We’re back to the old grind as they say; 10 hours of laundry, and a little grocery shopping later I’m back in my kitchen ready to cook up a storm!
Both JT and I picked up head colds while we were away; you know, the nasty, sneezey, sniffley, coughy kind? Chicken soup to the rescue! Everyone has their cold-cure secret recipe handed down from generation to generation so I won’t blog about it now, but what I will blog about is the amazing olive bread I made to accompany the cold cure soup! WARNING: you have to really LOVE olives, it will be too olivey if you’re just so-so on them!
We had this particular olive bread several times (almost every time) during our trip, it’s addictive. You just can’t stop! Not sure if I mentioned this before, but Moroccan food is not well salted, which is good because most of the time I find restaurant food too salty. This bread, on the other hand, is on the salty side, which goes perfectly with Moroccan food, or cold cure chicken soup. I found the recipe at Cooking with Alia please recall I made her Sellou as one of my Trio of Moroccan desserts. Since it worked so well, I thought I’d try her Moroccan Olive Bread. We made a typical Moroccan Bread at Maison MK in Marrakech and I discovered that Moroccan bread tends to be ‘shaggier’ than Western bread (looser and sticky to start). Then, after a rising, you add flour little by little to pull in the dough until it is no longer sticky. I think I used an additional cup of flour for this step! Bottom line it worked like a charm! Light, fluffy very olive tasting bread. DELICIOUS!
Another thing I should mention is that I used real Moroccan olive oil and its taste is so unique and delicious, I don’t think normal olive oil will do. But if you can’t find the genuine Moroccan olive oil, be sure to use the darkest and richest olive oil you can find, it will make a difference. Also, I halved the recipe but left the olive oil as full quantity! The technique is what we learned in Maison MK.
Thanks Alia, this recipe will be definitely made again in our home.
Ingredients:
- 1 1/2 cups of flour (keep extra flour on the side for kneading)
- 3/4 cup of warm water
- 3 oz of black olives cut into small pieces (I used 1/2 sun dried and 1/2 kalamata)
- 3 tablespoons of olive oil
- 1 tablespoons of thyme (I had only 1 tsp and it was fine)
- 1/2 tablespoon of dry yeast
- 1/2 teaspoon of sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon of salt
Directions:
- Activate the dry yeast (I used instant) with the sugar and warm water. Let the yeast mixture rest for 5 minutes. The yeast is active if the mixture expands and bubbles up.
- Add the olive oil, thyme, and salt to the yeast mixture.
- Gradually add the flour to the mixture until the flour is completely absorbed. You will end up with a very sticky/shaggy dough.
- Fold the olives into the dough.
- Cover the dough and let it rest in a warm place for 30 minutes.
- After 30 minutes, the dough doubles in volume. Sprinkle your workspace generously with flour and place the dough over it.
- Sprinkle the dough with flour and knead for the next 10 minutes using the palm of your hand. Add flour to the dough until you end up with a malleable non-sticky dough. It should just be non-sticky, not shiny like regular bread dough. You will know when the dough stops sticking to your hand.
- You can make round breads by flattening the ball of dough with the palm of your hand and then pinch the edges up and in to make a nice ball.
- Transfer the bread pinched side down onto a baking pan covered with parchment paper. Flatten a little with the palm of your hand.
- Cover the boule and let rest in a warm place for 30 minutes.
- Preheat your oven to 420° F degrees.
- Place your baking pan in the lower third of the oven and bake for 30 minutes or until done. I like a slightly crustier crumb, so next time I will brush with egg white, like you do with a French stick! Or you can also put a pan of water in the oven with the bread for the first 15 minutes.
[…] baked these knots twice so far,the first time I stuck to the recipe but since I like bold flavors, the second time I doubled the salt and added the herbs de province […]
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I love olives in bread. Looks wonderful. Thank you for the recipe 🙂
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Thank you for dropping by Caroline, I hope you enjoy reading my blog.
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I love olive bread! my only problem up till now was finding a recipe that is olive-y enough! this could be it! thank you for sharing Eva
I hope your cold is all better now
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Check out Alia’s site, Sawsan. She has some good videos on how to’s! I just loved how simple this recipe was, and it tastes amazing. I am making it again this weekend when we have good friends over for a Moroccan Feast!
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Moroccan olive oil….can’t say that I have any in my pantry. Sounds like it would add a unique flavor to the bread. Hope you enjoyed your trip and brought back lots of great recipe ideas. Especially since we’re coming for a visit next week!!!
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Hey Barbie! We’ll be cooking up a storm! All the dishes, minus the lamb, of course. Very very tasty food. Bring your appetites!
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hehe I know what you mean, there is always so much laundry after a trip isn’t there! 😛 And travelling makes one really susceptible to colds. But a slice of this delicious olive bread would right jetlag I suspect! 😀
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Sadly the olive bread didn’t do the trick for my jet lag Lorraine, and it wasn’t for a lack of trying either!
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Oh, olives in bread. Now, why haven’t I heard or tried something like this sooner? Inspiration, indeed. Thanks very much! I will be trying it very soon.
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Thanks Kate, the Italians also make a version of this bread that is delicious.
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Your bread looks wonderful! Have not tried Moroccan olive oil before! Will keep a lookout for this. I love bread like this especially yummy with soup! Thanks for sharing!
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Thanks for your comment; the Moroccan olive oil is amazing.
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I’ll be passing this recipe along to the bread maker in the family. 😉
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Thanks Jed, it’s easy and delicious!
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I love olives – no chance of it being *too* olivey for me! I bet your kitchen once again smells amazing after being “dormant” for some weeks, and your bread looks fabulous. I wonder if you will do the same thing as me – when you get near the end of the olive oil bottle, you’ll put it aside, to scared to use it because then it will be “the end of something special”. I still have some drops of a really good tuscan olive oil on my counter at home…. sigh… I should really just get on with it and use it up!
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Thanks Charles, yes, I do the same thing; I have several bottles of balsamic with just a few drops! Funny how that is; I’ll have to plan our next vacation around refilling my pantry! 🙂
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Welcome back Eva! Wow, that did go by quickly… I just adore olive bread and this one looks moist and gorgeous – love the thyme in this. All the best as you settle back in to your routines – xo.
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Thanks Kelly. Although the bread is on the salty side, one can moderate the other courses for salt to balance.
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Oh, YUM! There was this amazing artisan bread place in San Diego called Bread and Cie that makes a kalamata olive bread….it was SO delicious! The recipe and looks very similar (I have the recipe, but I’ve never made it).
You are such an inspiration to go ahead and make it! Thank you, Eva and thanks for sharing so much of your amazing trip with us!
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Amazing Ann, thank you for such a wonderful compliment. I can see having this bread with your turkey meatball soup, quick chili or even the asparagus soup. Perfect for dunking! And I know you’re salt conscious in your recipes do the saltiness of the olives should be a perfect match!
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Moroccan olive oil sounds intriguing and divine. What a fabulous trip you must have had!
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Thanks Lynda, it was a real once in a lifetime, so glad to have had the opportunity to go. The olive bread tastes exactly like the ones we had in Morocco; hope you try it.
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Hope you’re feeling better. Chicken Soup is so wonderful when you’re not feeling your best. Your olive bread looks lovely and I love olives so ‘less’ is certainly not ‘more’.
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Thank you Charlie Louie, chicken soup always makes me feel sooooo much better. I wish I had made more of it. The bread was easy to make, hope you try it; Alia has instructional videos on this too!
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This might be too olivey for Katherine, but not me. I love it. After 10 hours of laundry, I’d probably pass out. But it is so great coming home to your kitchen. Well, my kitchen I mean!
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Greg, sometimes I think going to the laundromat is a better option-using 5 washers and 5 driers all at once! Cooking in my own kitchen is certainly a treat! This weekend will be fun, I’ll have caught up on my jet-lag!
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Oh no! A head cold while on vacation. That is the worst – especially flying with a cold. I hope that you feel better soon. We’ve been sharing that blasted cold with each other around here for weeks now. I’m really ready for it to hit the road! This bread looks beautiful. I appreciated your warning about olives…I am so-so on them. Mike and the kids however LOVE olives and I have no doubt that they’d enjoy this bread.
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We always take an allergy pill when we fly which helps with the sinus pain.
It’s a really easy recipe, you should get the kids to make it!
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I, too, love olives, Eva, and couldn’t get here quickly enough once I saw that today’s post was about olive bread! I’m so glad that your recipe only calls for 1 1/2 cups of flour, meaning that a relatively small loaf results. I end up wasting bread when the recipes call for 4 or 5 cups. I can only use so many bread crumbs! 🙂
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I couldn’t agree more, John. I usually bite the bullet and half or quarter the recipe. It more than often works out!
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Beautiful looking bread, Eva. I LOVE olives and olive bread…this one looks like it must have curative powers. Welcome home!
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Thanks Betsy, it really is a wonderful recipe. It’s great to be home,
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Olives, thyme…your kitchen must have smelt heavenly while the bread baked…
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It really did Angie, even while I was making dough, that olive oil is so fragrant.
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