When you get tired of ordinary whole-grain bread, olives come to the rescue! The interesting shape and aromatic olive flavour will make your bread intriguing once again. This recipe is very simple and suitable for beginners.
I must admit that for a while, we regularly bought olive bread from the store (it looked just like in the picture, it is where I got the idea for the shape). It was tasty, yes, but the ingredients listed on the back of the package didn’t appeal to me. It’s very hard to find completely whole grain bread for some reason. Maybe because whole grain flour spoils faster, whole grain bread becomes hard quicker and is much less soft from the start compared to white bread. But, almost everyone knows that flour made from the whole wheat grain is much healthier for us, as almost all nutrients and beneficial fibres are found in the outer layer of the grain, which is removed in the process of making white flour. That’s exactly why white flour spoils much slower, because even bacteria don’t have much to eat from it, and the oils found in the husk, which can go rancid over time, are also removed.
Here’s a small example of the nutrients found in 100% whole wheat flour compared to white wheat flour (source: Cronometer app):
100g of whole wheat flour contains (340 kcal): 3.6mg of iron (45% of daily needs); 137mg of magnesium (57% of daily needs); 2.6mg of zinc (33% of daily needs); and of course a lot of B vitamins: B1 (56% of daily needs), B2 (18%), B3 (41%), B6 (41%).
100g of white wheat flour contains (364 kcal): 1.2mg of iron (15% of daily needs); 22mg of magnesium (9% of daily needs); 0.7mg of zinc (9% of daily needs); and of B vitamins: B1 (13% of daily needs), B2 (4%), B3 (10%), B6 (4%).
Whole spelt flour is even more nutritious than whole wheat, so I used it in this recipe. For example, 100g of whole spelt flour contains 4.4mg of iron, 3.3mg of zinc, etc.
When you make your homemade bread, you control all the ingredients that go into it, and you can consume it while it’s still very fresh and therefore soft, warm, and appealing. What we do is bake several loaves, then leave only as much as we will eat in one day, and freeze the rest in portions. When we want to eat fresh bread again, we defrost as much as we need in the microwave and always eat fresh and warm bread. It really is like it was just baked.
My recommendation for those who really don’t have time to make it but want to eat homemade whole grain bread is, if possible, to buy a bread machine. We had one when the kids were very young and I must admit it was a great investment. In the evening before bed, put all the ingredients in, set the program of your choice and set the timer in how many hours you want the bread to start baking. In the morning, as if by magic, you are greeted by freshly baked bread to your taste, as well as a wonderful bakery aroma that will fill your kitchen.
Whole Grain Olive Bread
Equipment
- Oven
- Baking sheet
- Mixer with a Dough Hook attachment optional
Ingredients
- 500 g whole grain spelt flour
- 1 packet of dry yeast
- 1 ½ teaspoons of salt
- 350 ml warm water about 40°C
- 1 teaspoon of date syrup or another sweetener to help the yeast optional
- 100 g black or green olives
Instructions
- Put the flour and salt in a bowl and mix. If you don’t have a mixer with a dough hook attachment, stir with a wooden spoon.
- Add the date syrup to the water (optional) and mix with a spoon. Add the dry yeast, stir, and let it sit for 10 minutes. If you are not adding the syrup to the water, just mix the yeast and procede to the next step.
- Slowly add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients while stirring.
- Mix the dough until you get a uniform consistency. The dough will be quite soft, but that’s what we want because otherwise whole grain flour results in a firm bread.
- Leave the dough to rise for at least an hour, or until it doubles in size.
- Drain the olives and cut them into slices.
- After one hour, add the olives and knead the dough again. If you’re kneading by hand and not with a mixer, you’ll need to add a bit more flour to keep the dough from sticking to your hands. But not too much, or the bread will be too hard.
- Shape one large or two smaller loaves and place them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. I shaped the loaves as shown in the picture by twisting them (similar to wringing a towel).
- Allow the loaves to rise for at least another 30 minutes. If your kitchen is cold, place the baking sheet in the oven and turn on the light, but don’t turn on the oven itself. The light will get the oven slightly warm.
- When the loaves have risen, preheat the oven to 180°C (356°F) and bake for 30 minutes. After 15 minutes, turn the baking sheet.
- Wait for it to cool a bit before slicing.
