Friday 20 March 2009

Israeli olive oil bread rolls

Polish: oliwka
Romanian: măslină
Ligurian: auriva
Sicilian: aliva
Hausa: zàitùn
Basque: oliba
Kabyle: azemmur
Greek: ελιά
Caló: letaya
Hebrew: זית

To be honest, I hated olives and olive oil. My sister, after her travel to Valencia, brought to us a new habit of sprinkling bread with olive oil and juice squeezed directly with hands from a fresh tomato. I couldn't stand that taste until I went... to Chile. Once my lovely Chilean friends, Susy and Diego, bought a pack of olives for our trip at the sea side. I tried one reluctantly and... I fell in love :) Now I understand my friends who are able to eat the whole jar while going bakc home from the grocery, cause I sometimes do the same. But I don't care, they are healthy and delicious!
My brother bought 1 kg of black olives and I was wondering wether to eat them all, make tapenade or Palestinian ragout with olives and chicken... But yet I decided to try another recipe from Elizabeth Wolf-Cohen's book "Jüdische Küche", which my sister and brother-in-law gave me for Christmas. But I made some small changes in this recipe. If you love olives, try Israeli olive breads, לחם זיתים!

(for 9 buns)
350 gr flour
90 gr buckwheat flour
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon oregano
a pinch of pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon dried yeast
225 ml lukewarm water
300 gr black olives (pitted)

1. If you use bread machine (as I did), just pour the water to the recipient and add salt, sugar, oil, oregano, sieved flour and yeast and set for a kneading program. If you use your hands, put all dry ingredients into a bowl (sieve flours of course) and slowly add warm water and oil and knead. Cover and set in a warm place to let the dough grow (it takes about 1 hour)

2. When you are ready with 1st point, the dough is twice as big as it was while kneading, chop olives and knead the dough again, together with olives. Form buns (I made 9) and leave them for about 30 minutes to grow again.

3. You can eventually lightly cut your buns lenghtwise or make a cross with a knife. Bake about 20 minutes in 180C oven. And that's it!



2 comments:

Agata Chmielewska (Kurczak) said...

ja kiedyś też nie znosiłam oliwek, a teraz... ale preferuję czarne ;)

Ewa said...

czyli przepis akurat na Twój gust :)