Sunday, October 12, 2008

Puccia- Black Olive Cheeks

Alright. There's a problem here. It's 4:06 in the morning as I write this and I just can't sleep. I guess I should chalk it up to napping this afternoon but.... that doesn't solve my problem. Neither does watching episode after episode of the very entertaining medical drama, House. Ahhh!! I'm going to be a zombie tomorrow! I figured, while I have the time, why not just post about this bread that I made last week and if that doesn't work, I'll just start straightening up my room. This black olive bread, or rolls rather, comes from Daniel Leader's Local Breads. It is an Italian bread made using a biga fermented overnight and built from there. The dough is kneaded in a mixer and at the end of kneading black olives are mixed in. The dough turns our rather wet and sticky, I found much like a ciabatta. Scaling the dough into rolls was quite a messy job. My rolls never got the same height and color as shown in his photograph, go figure, but everyone here seemed to love them. The olives were not too overwhelming for the none olive lovers. I think I could stand to leave bigger pieces next time. Although... my mother, for whom I made this bread as a surprise, requested next time the use of the more assertively flavorful green olives. I guess you can't win 'em all. These rolls are good though the next day even. If you want to prolong their shelf lives, freeze them for best results. Otherwise, enjoy with cream cheese or better yet, olive spread. And don't forget to say the name, puccia, a bunch of times. It's rather fun, don't you think?



The dry ingredients for the biga.

With water, and coming together in a ball.

The biga on my surface, about to be kneaded.

All kneaded,


and placed in a sealed container to rise overnight.
And rise pretty nicely it did.


Here's the biga floating in the rest of the recipe's water.


Declumping..

Adding yeast..And adding the rest of the flour and salt.


The dough has just come together..so let the kneading begin!

And end... the dough is completely smooth and waiting for the black olives.

There they are!

They too are slowly being incorporated.



Here is the final dough set to rise.

And rise it did!

I turned the dough out onto my counter to scale... too sticky a process for pictures.


Proofing on a pan.
Dusted with flour and ready for the oven,


All done.

Good night!!!!

3 comments:

Jude said...

Ooh another Local Breads recipe... And I thought I was being bad staying as late as 1 am.
Are all bloggers insomniacs?

Unknown said...

Where is the recipe???

Unknown said...

Where is the recipe???