This week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe is right up my alley — bread, cheese, olives, tapenade, I mean, what’s not to like about that? This recipe is Dorie’s take on a quick bread recipe from the Comté cheese company.
Dorie’s version combines flour, baking powder, salt, eggs, milk, cheese, tapenade, olives, lemon zest, and olive oil. Everything is quickly mixed together, scraped into a pan, and baked for about 45 minutes. The house smelled heavenly while the loaves were in the oven! I doubled the recipe, and we had one loaf with dinner right after it baked. I’m taking the other one to a friend’s house this evening as part of a cheese plate.
We really liked this bread. It’s salty, cheesy, savory, and really rich. I cut back the salt called for in the recipe by just a bit, as I was worried that the cheese, olives, and tapenade would throw it over the top salt-wise. It came out fine, not too salty for my tastes. But I think it would have been OK without any additional salt, too.
My only complaint about the recipe was the amount of olive oil. It was more than 3/4 cup for the two loaves! And combined with the eggs, cheese, and oil-cured olives, it seemed a little on the oily side for me. I think you could cut the olive oil way back, and maybe even eliminate it entirely. I made a note in my book to use less oil next time.
This post participates in French Fridays with Dorie, a group cooking its way through Dorie Greenspan’s Around My French Table one delicious recipe at a time. To see what other participants thought of this recipe, click here.