Friday's olive bread loaf

I've used a basic Brewer's yeast bread recipe from a Moro's cookbook for years. It never lets me down, it's really simple to make, only one rise for up to 3 hours and then in the oven for around an hour. Recently I was given a Dan Lepard cookbook Short and Sweet. So, having absorbed his wisdom about the temparature of ingredients, when to knead and when to leave, I've decided to experiment with my basic recipe and add some other ingredients. First up has been a handful of green olives, combining 300g of strong white flour with 200g of strong wholemeal flour (mix with 1 tsp of ground sea salt, 350ml of warm water and one sachet of dried yeast ). Having first worried that the saltiness of the olives had killed the yeast (apprently too much salt does do that), it did rise when left overnight. The resulting loaf was rather good - good crumb like texture and nice firm crust.

My green olive bread

It needed to cook for about 40 mins in a 1lb loaf tin and then for 20 mins out of the tin. We have an Everhot electric range, which is the pride and joy of our kitchen. There are two ovens which can be set to whatever temperature that you want. We have the larger top oven set at 200 degrees and the lower at 100 degrees centigrade, which suits us and suits most recipes, with a little adjustment for the cooking times. It is easy to alter the temperatures in both ovens, and the bottom right hand warming oven helps to keep food from spoiling. Anyway that is a long-winded way of saying that the exact cooking time for loaves, or anything for that matter, is that it's ready when it's ready.

Everhot Electric Range