I love bread!

It's so delicious, it can be made sweet or savoury and you can add any number of toppings to it. Versatile as it is, my preferred bread is just bog ordinary white bread; not all sweet tasting, just plain bread with marmite and peanut butter spread on top. Mmmmm heavenly deliciousness!

With Matt being gone for the week I didn't want to stop my cooking and so I figured that if I bake bread from my cookbook then it shouldn't go to waste. So yesterday I made olive bread.

I don't remember ever making bread before where you have to knead it and let it rise. There is some foggy memory from Home Economics class, but I'm not too sure about that. So this was my first venture into true bread making in adulthood. (I have a wonderful recipe for irish soda bread which is soooo easy, just bung the ingredients together, stir and bake!)

As I already mentioned, I'm not a fan of sweet bread (in fact I hate it, I get angry anytime I have plain white bread over here! so freaking sweet, yuck!), so I was happy to see that this recipe doesn't require any sugar :)

2 red onions are fried until soft and then added to 7 cups of plain white flour with 1 1/3 cups of roughly chopped olives, 4 tbsp roughly chopped fresh parsley, 1 1/2 tsp salt and 4 tbsp of dried active yeast. 2 cups of hand hot water are added and the whole thing is mixed with a flat edged knife to form a dough. Then knead for ten minutes.

TEN MINUTES???!!!! Good God! That 10 minutes never seemed to end. My arms were killing me by the end of it.

So after the 10 laborious minutes you place the dough in a clean bowl, cover and allow to sit in a warm place until it's doubled its size (about 45 minutes in my case). Then turn out onto a chopping board, cut in two and place the two halves onto lightly greased baking trays. Cover with oiled cling film and allow to sit until doubled in size again (another 30-40 minutes). Finally bake at 425F /220C/gas mark 7 for 40 minutes.

The recipe made 2 whole loaves and that is too much, even for me! So I'm taking a loaf down to some friends down the street.

I've had 3 slices of the finished product so far and it's pretty good! The olives give it a kind of sweetness, which is ok because this isn't supposed to be plain bread. I think I would have preferred for there to be more onions and seasonings in it. It's a very delicate flavor and I feel it needs just a smidgen more to be perfect!

Other news, I spent the day in the garden; weeding and napping on the hammock. So after the TEN MINUTES (crikey!) of dough kneading I decided that I had earned myself a shower and something nice for dinner. I settled on a mediterranean pizza from Kashi. It has "Spinach, red onions, sweet red peppers, four signature cheeses including Feta with roasted red pepper sauce on a stone-fired kashi 7 whole grains and sesame with flax seed crust.

It was very yummy! Some people might compare the crust to cardboard, but I'd think they'd be doing it a diservice. The crust was whole grain and gritty in a pleasant way and really allowed the flavors of the toppings to be the focus of attention :) I served my pizza with a nice large glass of conquista malbec.

To make a good evening perfect I was able to talk with and see Matthew via Skype for a good 20 minutes before heading to bed. Being able to see someone instead of just talking over the phone makes such a huge difference. There are times when I feel very 'family sick' (no, not OF them, but due to the lack of them!) and so it's nice to be able to actually see them! I'm already looking forward to seeing them again soon :)

And, as always, don't forget to kiss your cook!