Easy Olive Baguette

It's been a couple of years now, that we almost don't buy bread at home - I prefer to make it myself. This gives me the freedom to experiment with various types of flour, recipes, forms and additives. Today's recipe is one of the variations of my usual bread recipe, but with a twist - literal and figurative :)

Ingredients:

• 300 g all purpose flour
• 200 g lukewarm water
• 7 g fresh yeast or 3 g dry yeast
• salt, sugar or honey, oregano
• two tbsp olive oil
• pitted olives

Preparation:

Activate the yeast with some of the water and the honey. I add a small teaspoon of honey in the water and stir, until the honey and the yeast have dissolved. In a bowl measure the flour, add salt and oregano, mix. Add the yeast and the rest of the water, mix everything well and thorough, until the entire flour is absorbed. At this stage I do not add the olive oil. 

Leave the dough covered to rest and rise for 30-45 min in a warm place (I put my bowl in the oven with the light on). When the dough has doubled, add the olive oil and fold the dough a dozen times, then leave again to rise for at least an hour.

When the dough has doubled again, spread it on a floured surface, cover it with the olives, cut into small pieces, then cut the dough into four and form four baguettes. I made mine by rolling the ends toward the center and enclosing the olives inside, then I twisted the roll a few times.

Cover the baguettes and leave them for the last time to rise. This recipe has no kneading, you need only time and patience. Once the baguettes have doubled again after an hour, brush them generously with olive oil and put the tray in a preheated oven at 250C for 15 min. I put a metal container with water at the bottom of the oven to get a crispy crust. After the 15 min are over, turn the oven temperature to 200C and bake for another 10 min.

These baguettes are so delicious, that you can snack with them directly like buns, or enjoy them with feta cheese, vegetable spreads or any other way you enjoy your bread.

Plaited Baguettes

This recipe was love from first sight. It looked easy, practical and interesting enough, I had the required ingredients and we were out of bread - so it seemed this afternoon the stars had lined favorably for me to make these baguettes :)
Ingredients:

• 2 eggs (1 yolk for glazing)
• 300 ml milk
• 650 g flour
• 7 g instant dry yeast
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp white vinegar
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp salt
•  various seeds

Dissolve the yeast in the warm milk. Add the eggs, oil, vinegar, sugar, salt and sifted flour. Form a soft dough and let rise until doubled. Divide the dough into 8 balls, make three strands from each ball and plait into three-strand loaves. Let the plaits rest and rise for half an hour. I learned a new trick today - fold the baking paper between the loaves, so that they won't stick to each other during baking. Thus I was able to bake the eight baguettes in one baking tin. Clever, right :)

Glaze with egg yolk, olive oil and milk and sprinkle with seeds. Bake in a preheated oven at 180C.

I served them for dinner with some freshly made apricot jam.