Olive Bread Twists

Hi everyone! Yia sas! Kekalo sirsete! To another episode of Dimitra's Dishes. My weakness is bread. Like there's no way that I can give bread up and I know there's a lot of people out there like me. So today I'm going to be sharing one of my favorite bread recipes with you. I've recently come up with Mediterranean Olive Bread Twists. These are addictive. I mean, you should have people over so that when these finish up, otherwise you'll eat the whole tray if you're like me. They're so soft and fluffy. I like to fill them with chopped Kalamata olives, sun-dried tomatoes, but there are so many options and I'll tell you some other ideas at the end of the video. Let me show you how I make them. Okay, so in a tabletop mixer, we're just going to go ahead and add two cups of lukewarm water. So make sure that the water is not cold and it's not hot. So if the water is too cold, it's going to take forever for the dough to rise. And if it's too hot, it can kill the yeast. Lukewarm is what you're looking for. Not too hot, not too cold, just like Goldilocks liked it. And then we'll add two teaspoons of granulated sugar in here. One and a half teaspoons of instant active yeast. The sugar is going to help activate the yeast even faster. And then a quarter cup of all purpose flour. You can use bread flour for this recipe. It'll come out even better. Mix that all together. I just use the dough hook attachment and then I attach it to the machine. And we're going to let this sit for eight to ten minutes. You cannot skip this step because even though it's almost impossible for yeast to go bad, sometimes it does go bad. And if it does go bad, your dough will not rise, it will not do its thing and you'll waste so much time and all these, you know, valuable ingredients. Just take that little time so that way you can make sure that the yeast is nice and fresh and you'll know it's active whenever a cloud forms on the top. You also smell it. It'll smell really yeasty. This is what it looks like. The longer it sits, the more bubbles it's going to create. If this doesn't happen and it just looks like cloudy water, you're going to have to throw out the yeast, get some fresh active dried yeast from the supermarket and start all over so you don't waste any ingredients. Okay, now that that's said, in my big bowl over here I have four cups of all purpose flour with one and a half teaspoons of salt. Once the yeast is nice and active, I'll add a quarter cup of olive oil to the water mixture and then all of the flour and the salt. This is going to knead for about eight to ten minutes on low speed. If you're using bread flour, the eight to ten minutes is going to be enough. If you're using all purpose flour, I would even take it up to twelve minutes just so that way it kneads really well and the dough will be really, really nice and light. So once that's done, we're going to transfer the dough into a big bowl that's been greased with some olive oil. We're going to toss it in there so that way it's covered in that oil. We're going to cover it with plastic wrap and set it aside in the warmest part of your house to rise until it's doubled in volume. That can take one hour, it can take two hours, it just depends on the temperature of your house. Make sure that it rises well so that way it's nice and light. While that's happening, we're just going to prepare the remaining ingredients. So we're going to chop up some olives. So I have eight ounces of pitted kalamata olives here. We're just going to roughly chop them and put them in a little bowl, have them ready. And then I love sun-dried tomatoes in this. If you don't like the sun-dried tomatoes, you can totally leave them out and instead you can chop up some roasted red bell peppers. Those would work well in here. Chop those up. I'm using tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes that are packed in olive oil. They have maximum flavor and they stay a little bit softer and I feel like they just taste better too. So we're just going to chop those up too, put them aside in a little bowl and once the dough has risen, we're going to carefully grease our work surface just with a little bit of olive oil. This is going to help the dough not stick to it. I'm going to spread the dough out into a large rectangle, sprinkle the olives on top, the sun-dried tomatoes. And then I also like to sprinkle some dried crushed oregano, one to two teaspoons just so that way everything is covered. You can use dried thyme instead. If you wanted some fresh herbs, you can do maybe fresh thyme and a little bit of rosemary. Those herbs go really well with the brininess of the olives and the sun-dried tomatoes. Then we're going to cut this into strips. You can either twist each individual strip for skinnier bread rolls or you can take two of the dough strips and twist them together just like this so that way it's nice and thick and it'll just be layered and soft and just delicious. My baking tray is lined with parchment paper and I sprinkled a little bit of semolina flour just to give it a little bit of a pizza texture. You know, every time you bite into really good New York style pizza, there's that little layer of semolina on the bottom. I love the way that tastes on bread. If you don't like it, you just skip that step. Carefully transfer the twists onto the baking tray that's lined with parchment paper. And now we're going to let this sit at room temperature for 25 to 30 minutes, just until it fluffs up a little bit. You don't want this to double up in volume because then it'll deflate in the oven. You just want it to be a little bit more airy so that way when it bakes, the inside of this bread is going to be so soft and delicate. The oven is preheated to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. If you want to, you can brush a little bit of water on top and sprinkle some sesame seeds. I feel like there's enough oil in this bread, especially since we greased the counter, that it's going to get nice color on it. So I will not be brushing it with water and my kids hate sesame seeds, so I'm skipping them. But this is going to go in my preheated oven. Again, it's at 400 degrees Fahrenheit. It's going to bake on the center rack for 25 minutes until it rises a little bit more. It's going to get beautifully golden. Take it out of the oven and let it rest for about 20 more minutes, 20, 30 more minutes, just so that way that steam settles. Once you pick these up when they've cooled down to room temperature, they're going to be so soft and fluffy. The outside is going to get a little bit crispy. When you pull these apart, you'll see the layers of olives and those sun-dried tomatoes, that oregano. It's so soft and good. I made some Macaroni a Me Quimau, which is the ground meat sauce with pasta. And I'm just going to dip this bread and I'll probably finish half of one of these twists. It's so good. Just look at the inside. Look at the texture of that bread, how light it is. You guys are going to love this one. I'll give you all of the options on the blog post, but it's ready to serve. Oh my God. These bread twists are soft and fluffy and just so flavorful and rustic and they're just beautiful. Just look at how good they are. When you twist them apart, you'll see how soft the inside is and airy. This is just a very easy recipe. So I know that some people are going to ask me in the comments if you can add the olives and the sun-dried tomatoes into the dough while it's rising. You can do that, but I feel like it will affect the texture. If you want really light and soft and fluffy bread, do it the way I did it at the end just by laying the bread out into a rectangle and then sprinkling it with your favorite toppings. If you don't like sun-dried tomatoes or even olives, you can totally turn this into a feta bread with feta, maybe some caramelized onions. If you like roasted red peppers, you can chop those up. Let me know how you're making it in the comments section down below, but definitely try this combination. If you like the combo of olives and sun-dried tomatoes, give this a try. It's so beautiful to look at, very easy to do, especially if you follow my instructions. Let me know how you're making it in the comments section down below, and to print this recipe out, head on over to the blog, DemetraStitches.com, and make this as soon as you can. Thank me later. Thank you so much for spending time with me today. I'll see you all next time. Yia sas!