Olive bread sticks made with baker’s yeast. Today we make the olive bread sticks, a new recipe that is part of our collection dedicated to homemade bread. If you loved the Semolina Bread with Sun-Dried Tomatoes and the Black Olive Bread, you’ll also love these crunchy sticks with olives in brine, a type of roll great to enjoy alone as a tasty snack, but also very useful to serve with appetizers and meat main courses. I prepared these crispy olive loaves with baker’s yeast, but you can easily replace it with sourdough starter, you will only need to increase the rising times and I assure you they will turn out even better. Are you ready to get your hands in the dough? Let’s hurry to the kitchen, but first a reminder that if you want to stay updated on all my recipes, you can follow my Facebook page (here) and my Instagram profile (here).
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Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Very inexpensive
Rest time: 3 Hours 40 Minutes
Preparation time: 20 Minutes
Cooking methods: Oven
Cuisine: Italian
Seasonality: All seasons

Ingredients to make olive bread sticks

1 7/8 cups re-milled durum semolina
2 1/2 cups type 0 flour (Italian bread flour)
28 oz pitted green olives in brine (pitted)
1 tbsp salt
1 7/8 cups water
1 1/8 tsp active dry yeast (or 12 g fresh yeast)

Tools

Stand mixer
Oven
Bowls

Preparation of the olive bread sticks

For this recipe you could increase the water amount to 500 g, but in that case you should be able to work a much wetter, softer dough. If you need to knead by hand instead of using a stand mixer, reduce the water slightly to about 420 g.

To make the olive loaves, put the flour, yeast and water in the bowl of the stand mixer.
Work for 15 minutes and then add the salt. Continue kneading and if the dough has difficulty coming together, stop, cover it and let it rest for 15 minutes. Resume kneading until the dough pulls away from the bowl and wraps around the hook.
Turn everything out onto the work surface and shape into a ball; let rest for ten minutes, then gently flatten it on a lightly oiled surface so it doesn’t stick, forming a large rectangle less than 1 cm thick. Precision is not necessary; just stretch it with your hands. Scatter roughly chopped olives on top.
Fold the dough over to enclose the olives inside the mass. Shape into a ball and place in a warm bowl until doubled in size. Depending on temperature, this can take two to three hours if it’s cold, or just one hour if it’s warm. When the dough has doubled, turn it out onto a floured surface and shape into a rough ball.
Divide the dough into 7–8 elongated pieces, then, helping yourself with plenty of flour, twist each piece on itself, stretching them to create loaves at least 10 inches long.
Place the loaves on a baking tray lined with parchment paper and let rest 30–40 minutes in a warm place for a second rise. Bake in a preheated oven at 428°F (conventional/no-fan) for 20–25 minutes or until fully cooked. For a crispy crust, when you turn the oven on also place a small bowl with about 3/4 inch (2 cm) of water inside: as it boils it will create steam in the oven and help form the crust.
Remove from the oven and serve hot or at room temperature.
Olive bread sticks keep for a couple of days, like any bread.