Bread and Oil with Home-Baked Bread

– The traditional recipes by OLEA PRILIS –

When the time comes to harvest olives, what springs to everyone’s mind is a nice slice of bread soaked in freshly pressed olive oil, for breakfast or as a snack – a true ritual here in Italy.

But the best thing is making the bread at home, because the freshly baked aroma mingles with that of the new oil: cut grass, artichoke, almond, arugola, tomato leaves, only a few of the intense flavours of quality extra virgin olive oil that has just been extracted.

In Tuscany, bread is usually “sciapo”, i.e. without salt, because in the old days a lot of food stuff was commonly preserved in salt, so it would taste better when eaten with saltless bread. Some like it, others don’t, but we can all agree that, when tasting new oil, it is the best kind of bread. Here is a simple recipe that everyone can muster for pane sciapo.

You can use any type of flour, but I prefer a stone ground, wholemeal flour: it requires more water for the dough, but it preserves the nutrients of the grains. It is important that the flour is both organic and from a certified source, otherwise it might contain chemicals and other substances used for growing wheat.

Bread and Oil with Home-Baked Bread

Ingredients:

500 grams of organic stone ground wholemeal flour

350 ml of spring or mineral still water – warm but not hot

1 cube of fresh yeast, o 2 packets of cream of tartar (for bread)

4 tablespoons of Olea Prilis Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1 heaped teaspoon of artisanal honey

Recipe:

Place the flour in a bowl large enough to hold comfortably all the ingredients.

Dissolve the yeast in the warm water, then pour it onto the flour while mixing with a fork, to avoid any lumps.

Add the honey

and finally add the Extra Virgin Olive Oil Olea Prilis.

Keep mixing until you have a smooth dough that no longer sticks to the bowl. Cover with cling film or a transparent lid, then wrap in a kitchen towel or cloth to keep it warm. It should be left to leaven for about three hours, until it has doubled in size.

Remove from the bowl and shape it into a loaf, or place it directly inside a baking tin; either way always use grease-proof baking paper, and let it stand to raise for another hour.

Place the loaf in the middle of a 220°pre-heated oven; turn the knob down to 200° and let it bake for 35/45 minutes. Baking times depend on the loaf dimension and the type of oven…. each one is different.

This time I’ve used “Fornetto Versilia”, a large ventilated pot that works as a stove-top oven; cooking time was about 90 minutes.

Very important: once cooked, leave the bread to cool on a rack or a grill, and leave until all the moisture trapped inside the loaf has evaporated. The wholemeal bread can be stored for up to a week in a paper bag. You can also freeze it by placing the sliced bread into freezer bags, and thaw when needed.