Cob of Olives

It was a Saturday in mid-May and after having some enjoyable banter with my hairdresser and picking up some Chard Seeds for use in future cooking projects I headed home and started work on some bread rolls or if you come from my part of the country, bread cobs.

With the sounds of aggressive jazzy horns from the opening track of King Crimson's challenging 1970 offering 'Lizard' spitting out of the stereo speakers I stirred together 225 grams of  strong white bread flour, 450 grams of strong wholemeal bread flour and a 7 ounce sachet of yeast in a large mixing bowl. Once these dry ingredients were properly combined I added half a pint of cold water and mixed it thoroughly into the flour and yeast which created a very soft, sloppy and sticky dough.

I realised that I needed to toughen the dough up so I put around four ounces of white bread flour into the bowl and kneaded the dough into the flour until it was dry enough to be flexible but not stick to the work surface when I rolled it out. Sometimes, depending on how well the water has been mixed into the flour and yeast, you may need a little more flour than I have suggested to dry the dough.

Now that the dough was prepared I took it in the bowl to the warmest place in the house, which is a window sill in one of the south-facing rooms, and left it to rise for one hour by which time it had nearly doubled in size.

After the hour had passed I rolled the dough out on a work surface covered in flour and then spread ten baby tomatoes, which I had halved, fifteen black olives (also halved) and the leaves from three sprigs of rosemary evenly onto the top of the dough. I then took the sides of the dough and pushed them to the centre of it so the dough resembled a huge ball filled with tomatoes, olives and rosemary.

I then cut the dough up into eight individual balls that were as large as a standard supermarket bread cob and  cooked them in the oven at 190 degrees (180 for non-fan ovens) for twenty minutes. After this period the cobs were clearly ready as their edges had become brown and crisp.

The positive thing about the taste of these cobs was that although the black olives could potentially have made the cobs taste too bitter, the edge was taken off the olives by the sweet tomatoes and the tangy rosemary which made the cobs appeal to those who do not normally enjoy olives. I took them to a gathering at the house of two of my friends that evening and the cobs complimented their excellent homemade chili con carne; which we both consumed as we sat down to watch the gripping and unpredictable series finale of Doctor Who.

Above and below: road testing the cobs with a spot of cheese