I haven't posted in a while. Its not like I haven't been cooking - I've made some questionable culinary choices in the past week and some thoroughly delicious ones (fajitas last night come to mind). I've reaffirmed some personal beliefs; namely that Sriracha or chili flakes can make most anything tasty. I also played around with throwing olives in dough. I shouldn't have to explain this one if you've ever had a good olive ciabatta or the luck of dining on a crispy olive bagel. And those are precisely the two things I tried to create.
And, following in the truest of Mikey Make traditions, I don't need no recipe. I took my standard mini baguette recipe (half the original, but approximately "one loaf" worth of dough) and added in 12 small olives, diced. I didn't press them at all, so they added a fair bit of olive juice into the dough - I had to compensate with a little extra flour at the end of mixing. The flavor was one that my coworkers thought of as enough of an olive hint without overpowering the taste buds. So, mission accomplished, I made bagels.
Here I put ~15 olives in the recipe (which uses something like 500 grams of flour, I think?) - the olive flavor was definitely a bit more subdued, but still noticeable. I also succeeded in getting some incredibly crispy bagel bottoms, something I'll have to try to replicate in the future. They were dusted with flour mostly for visual appeal, but it also takes a little of the olive and sea salt kick out of a bite. Based on these two dishes, I'll say the number of olives are 10-15 small (tip of pinkie finger or smaller) per "loaf" of bread to get a good olive taste. Maybe next time I'll even weigh it or (gasp) measure the volume.
