Olive Bread with Walnuts and Sunflower Seeds

You can make a meal with this olive bread or dip the bread in your favorite olive oil together with some cheeses as a side. For some reasons, olive has not been a staple item in my pantry for that long. I guess olive has not been part of my culinary heritage. But it is one of those things that once you’ve found it and gotten hooked on it, it never leaves. My culinary journey is richer for it. I used a mixture of oil-cured olives in a myriad of sizes and colors: red, green and black. This bread is another variation of the basic Tartine country bread recipe that I have been obsessing about in the last few months. Together with olives (pitted and coarsely chopped), the recipe calls for walnuts or hazelnuts (toasted and chopped), dried herbs de Provence and lemon zest. For an even more substantive bite and texture, I piled on one cup of toasted sunflower seeds. They were added to the dough during the initial stage of bulk fermentation when the first stretch-and-fold turns were made. Please see the cheat sheet below for details on the master recipe. (Notes on the use of the cheat sheet can be found here.) The recipe makes two loaves. Fifty percent scaling or half of the recipe would make one. Considering all these delectable additions, no wonder the olive bread is such a sensation – to the eye and to the taste bud – and fun to make. This glorious bread is not to be missed.

Note: I submitted this posting to yeastspotting.