recipe

Mary Grace Quigley's guide to adding dried fruit, nuts or olives to sourdough bread

Prep time: 12:00
Cook time: 0:55
Skill level: Medium
Serves: 1 loaf

Jazz up your sourdough bread to make it an olive loaf or fruit and nut loaf.(ABC Everyday: Mary Grace Quigley)

Perhaps you've made a successful sourdough loaf and now you're wondering about other breads you could try.

You can actually stick with the same sourdough recipe you've been using to make your bread dough (for example my sourdough for beginners recipe) and simply add your choice of additions to that dough.

Lately my favourite addition to loaves has been olives but there are many more things you can add using this method — think walnuts, pecans, sour cherries, flax seeds, sultanas, raisins or a combination of these things.

A pair of hands spoons a filling mixture from a bowl into dough rolled out on a bench. — The trick is to add your extra ingredients 30 minutes to 1 hour after you've mixed the dough together.(ABC Everyday: Mary Grace Quigley)

When to add your mix-ins

For bread recipes like my sourdough for beginners, which involve giving the dough a few folds while it develops, the best time to put in your additions is 30 minutes to 1 hour after you've mixed the dough together. This allows the maximum time for your additions to become evenly incorporated into the dough.

For bread recipes that don't require folding while the dough develops (such as the backwards bread recipe), or also if you decide at the last minute that you want to add something to your dough, you can add ingredients just before shaping the dough.

Simply allow the dough to rest for 10–20 minutes before you divide (if making multiple loaves) and shape it.

In this case the loaf will have a little more of a rustic look to it, as the additions won't be quite as evenly dispersed.

To turn your plain sourdough loaf into an olive loaf, for example, follow the simple steps below.

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Ingredients

Approximately 750g plain sourdough bread dough from a recipe of your choice,

150g pitted olives, drained well and chopped

1 heaped teaspoon dried basil

1 heaped teaspoon dried thyme

Method

1.Mix the dough together as per your recipe and wait 30 minutes.
2.Take 75g of your pitted, chopped olives and puree in a food blender. Then mix the pureed olives together with the remaining chopped olives and add the basil and thyme and continue mixing until well combined.
3.Use your hands to lightly wet your kitchen counter so that your dough won't stick to it. Then tip the dough out onto the counter and stretch out gently to form a rectangle, keeping the dough around 1.5–2cm thick.
4.Tip the olive mix onto the dough and spread it out evenly across the rectangle.
5.Roll up the dough, rolling it once vertically and again horizontally (see video).
6.Allow the dough to rest for around 30 minutes and then continue folding the dough as per your recipe (ideally once hourly for a few more hours). The olives will become more integrated into the dough with each fold.
7.When you shape the dough, try to choose the smoothest part to become the outside of the dough and avoid having olives on the outside of the dough. I like to pick them off and squish them into the bottom of the loaf because sometimes they burn during baking if they're exposed on top of the loaf. Allow the dough to rest in the fridge for at least 1 hour after shaping.
8.Continue following your recipe and bake your loaf as normal, but give it an extra 5–10 minutes while baking with the lid on. Bake until golden brown and then enjoy your extra flavourful loaf.