Olive Sourdough Bread (Kalamata, Rosemary, Sea Salt)

Olive sourdough is the loaf you order at a smart Italian restaurant and wonder how they make it taste so much better than yours at home. The trick is twofold: the right olives (most home bakers use the wrong ones) and the right method for incorporating them (most recipes get this wrong too). Get both right and you have a loaf that genuinely competes with anything from a Tuscan farm bakery.

The recipe

Ingredient	Weight	Baker's %
Strong white bread flour	400g	80%
Strong wholemeal flour	100g	20%
Water	375g	75%
Active sourdough starter	100g	20%
Pitted Kalamata or Taggiasca olives	120g	24%
Olive oil (extra virgin)	20g	4%
Fine sea salt	10g	2%
Fresh rosemary, finely chopped (optional)	1 tbsp

The right olive matters

Use Kalamata, Taggiasca, or Niçoise olives. These are the deeply flavoured, oil-cured Mediterranean olives that hold their shape during baking and contribute a salty, fruity character to the bread.

Don't use:

• Cocktail green olives in brine — too watery, too sharp, dilute the dough.
• Sliced black olives from a tin — pre-sliced means too much surface area; they dissolve into the dough.
• Stuffed olives — the stuffing leaks out and ruins the crumb.

Buy them whole, pit them yourself if needed (use the side of a knife to crush gently — the pit pops out). Drain on kitchen paper before incorporating to remove excess oil that would interfere with fermentation.

Method

Step 1: Prep the olives

Drain the olives. Pat dry with kitchen paper. Cut each olive in half — don't chop further, you want recognisable pieces in the crumb. Toss with the olive oil and rosemary if using.

Step 2: Autolyse

In a bowl, mix the flours and water. Cover and rest 1 hour. Don't add starter, salt, or olives yet.

Step 3: Mix in starter and salt

Add the starter and salt. Squeeze and pinch through until incorporated. The dough will be sticky and rough.

Step 4: First stretch-and-fold

30 minutes after mixing, do one set of stretch-and-folds (4 reaches around the bowl).

Step 5: Add the olives at the second fold

30 minutes later, lay the dough out flat on the counter. Scatter the prepared olives over the surface. Fold the dough over them, then perform the second set of stretch-and-folds. The olives distribute through the fold action without being broken up.

This is the technique that makes the difference. If you mix the olives in at the start, they get worked through the gluten as it develops, releasing too much oil and water and softening the dough excessively. Adding at the second fold — when gluten is partially formed — keeps the olives whole and the dough structure intact.

Step 6: Two more folds, then bulk

Two more sets of stretch-and-folds, 30 minutes apart. Then bulk for another 1.5–2 hours, undisturbed, until the dough has grown by 70% and is jiggly.

Step 7: Pre-shape, bench rest, final shape

Pre-shape gently (the olives can tear the dough if you handle aggressively). Rest 30 minutes. Final shape into a tight round or oval. Lift into a banneton, dust with flour.

Step 8: Cold retard

12–18 hours in the fridge.

Step 9: Bake

Preheat a Dutch oven to 240°C for 45 minutes (slightly cooler than for plain sourdough — the olive oil makes the crust prone to over-darkening). Tip the dough onto parchment, score with a single bold curve, lift into the hot pot.

• 20 minutes at 240°C, lid on.
• 20 minutes at 215°C, lid off.

The crust should be deep amber-mahogany. The internal temperature should hit 96°C.

Cool 90 minutes before slicing — the olive oil keeps the crumb working for longer than a plain loaf, and slicing too early gives a gummy texture.

The Italian-restaurant version

To replicate the version served at smarter Italian restaurants, do these three things:

1. Use Taggiasca olives. Smaller, sweeter, less salty than Kalamata. Italian, expensive, transformative.
2. Add 1 tablespoon of finely chopped fresh rosemary with the olives.
3. Brush the surface with olive oil and a pinch of flaky salt in the last 5 minutes of baking.

The result tastes like the bread you'd get at a hill-village trattoria in Liguria.

What to serve with olive sourdough

This is a strong-flavoured loaf. It pairs best with foods that match its intensity:

• Tomato bruschetta: ripe tomatoes, garlic, basil, olive oil, sea salt. The classic.
• Antipasti: cured meats, hard cheeses, marinated artichokes, sun-dried tomatoes.
• Grilled fish: particularly anything Mediterranean — sea bass, sardines, octopus.
• Strong cheeses: aged pecorino, manchego, taleggio.
• Soups: minestrone, ribollita, white bean and rosemary.
• Just olive oil: a high-quality extra virgin, dipped, with sea salt. The simplest and one of the best.

The wholemeal element

The 20% wholemeal in the recipe matters. Pure white olive bread is good but slightly one-dimensional. The wholemeal adds nuttiness that complements the olives without competing with them. If you don't have wholemeal, substitute with rye for a darker, more rustic loaf — also excellent.

Common problems

Olives sink to the bottom: the dough wasn't strong enough to suspend them. Build more gluten with extra stretch-and-folds before adding the olives.

Crumb is gummy around the olives: too much oil from the olives. Drain and pat dry more thoroughly next time.

Bread tastes too salty: the olives' brine has carried over. Soak pitted olives in water for 30 minutes before draining.

Crumb is dense: the fat in the olives slowed bulk fermentation. Push bulk an extra 30–45 minutes, or use 22% starter instead of 20%.

Crust is too dark: the oil promotes browning. Drop your bake temperature by 10°C.

Variations

Olive and walnut

Add 60g of toasted walnut pieces with the olives. Excellent with goat's cheese.

Olive, lemon, and rosemary

Add the zest of one unwaxed lemon and 1 tablespoon chopped rosemary with the olives. Mediterranean sunshine in a loaf.

Olive and sun-dried tomato

Replace 50g of the olives with chopped sun-dried tomatoes (oil-packed, drained). Sweet-savoury balance.

Pure black olive

Use 150g Kalamata olives, pulse half in a food processor to chop fine, leave the other half halved. The fine chop colours the dough purple-grey; the halves give visible chunks.

Storage

Olive bread keeps slightly longer than plain sourdough — the oil helps. 4 days in a paper bag at room temperature; 5 days cut-side-down on a board. Slice and freeze any beyond a week.

Toast extraordinary the day after baking. The olives release more flavour in the toast than they do in fresh slices. A piece of toasted olive bread with butter is a strong contender for the best breakfast in your kitchen.

FAQ

Can I use brined olives?

Drain and rinse them, then pat thoroughly dry. They contribute too much water if used straight from the brine.

How big should the olive pieces be?

Halved is ideal. Whole is fine. Quartered is too small — they dissolve into the dough.

Can I use green olives?

Less traditional but works. Use Castelvetrano (Sicilian, sweet and buttery) for the best result. Avoid sharp green cocktail olives.

Why does my olive bread always tear?

Almost always added too much olive oil-bound moisture, or olives weren't drained well. Pat dry thoroughly.

Can I make this with pure wholemeal?

Yes — use 500g wholemeal instead of the white-and-wholemeal blend. Hydration up to 80%. The result is darker, denser, more rustic — beautiful but not the same loaf.

What's the best olive to use in the UK?

Belazu Kalamata olives are widely available and excellent. Olives It! and Crespo are also good supermarket choices. Brindisa specialise in Spanish olives — their Hojiblanca and Empeltre are both superb in bread.

Why this loaf is worth the extra effort

Plain sourdough is everyday bread; olive sourdough is special-occasion bread. Friday night supper with friends. A picnic on the beach in St Ives. Christmas Eve charcuterie board. The loaves you remember from holidays in Italy and France.

It's not harder than a plain loaf — just an extra step at fold two and an extra ingredient. But the difference in result is huge. If you've been baking plain country loaves for a while and want a project that feels like a proper level-up, this is the one. Most home bakers we know who learn it never go back — it becomes part of their permanent rotation, alongside the plain country loaf and the wholemeal.

Pairing with wine

The intensity of olive bread pairs differently from plain sourdough. The right pairings:

• Italian red: Chianti Classico, Sangiovese, Aglianico — match the Mediterranean character.
• Provençal rosé: Bandol, Tavel — for summer lunches with salad and olive bread.
• Crisp white: Vermentino, Albariño, Picpoul — match the saline character of the olives.
• Sherry: Manzanilla or Fino — the most overlooked pairing. The salinity of dry sherry plays beautifully with olive bread and almonds.

Avoid heavy reds (Cabernet, Malbec) — they overpower the bread. Avoid sweet whites — they clash with the olives.

Why olive sourdough specifically

Of all the flavoured sourdoughs you could make — cheese, walnut, raisin, herb, fig — olive is the most versatile and the most reliable. The olives don't significantly alter the dough chemistry (unlike cheese, which adds fat and changes fermentation), don't release sugar that browns the crust too dark (unlike raisins), and don't compete with toppings (unlike strong herbs). They contribute flavour and texture without making the bread harder to bake.

If you're going to learn one flavoured sourdough loaf, learn this one. It's the one that opens the door to all the others.

The schedule, condensed

• 1pm: autolyse (1 hour)
• 2pm: mix in starter and salt
• 2:30pm: first stretch-and-fold
• 3pm: add olives, second stretch-and-fold
• 3:30pm: third stretch-and-fold
• 4pm: fourth stretch-and-fold
• 4pm-6pm: bulk to 70% growth
• 6pm: pre-shape, bench rest
• 6:30pm: final shape, into banneton, into fridge
• Next morning, 7am: bake

Buying olives in bulk

If you bake olive bread regularly, buying olives by the kilo from a deli or specialist supplier is far better value than supermarket jars. A 1kg tub of pitted Kalamata olives from a Greek deli costs around £10 and stays fresh in the fridge for 6 weeks — enough for 8 loaves at 120g each. Compare that to £4 for a 200g jar of pitted Kalamata at a supermarket.

Specialist suppliers worth knowing: Belazu (online and in independent grocers), Brindisa (Spanish specialist), Olives Et Al (Dorset-based), and any Greek or Turkish deli in your area.