Olive you, too!

For Christmas, I received a lovely cookbook called Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Don't let the name fool you, I still had to let it rise a total of 3 hours. Between each of the bread recipes are recipes for soups, dips, pasta dish, and anything else you’d eat with bread! I’ve only done two bread recipes thus far and I’m already hooked. The first recipe from the book I tried was olive tapenade bread. We had just gotten snowed in so I made do with ingredients we already had.

I used two different jars of Spanish olives leftover in the fridge and a jar of spicy peppers, capers, and celery. I chopped everything together and voila! Olive tapenade!

The bread recipe was simple, using only 4 cups of water, 6 cups of flour, some kosher salt, and yeast. I halved the recipe in case I failed miserably. Luckily, I succeeded cheerfully!

There are two things I will do differently next time. I will add more tapenade, as there wasn’t nearly enough. And secondly, I need to practice my scoring techniques. As you can see from the photo, the crust’s design looks like I did it under the influence! Cuts should be drawn no more than a quarter of an inch deep.

 

The bread turned out moist, almost custard like. I decided to make a Reuben sandwich. I bought Boar’s Head corned beef and sauerkraut, along with Thousand Island dressing and Cape Cod potato chips. I used mozzarella and Gruyére cheese instead of Swiss cheese. The combination of freshly baked bread, hot melted cheese, and a warm house among snowy conditions made the meal taste positively delightful.