I grew up with a mother and grandmother who are/were phenomenal cooks. My mother, to this day, has this unfathomable ability to produce a meal for the Queen with 10 minutes notice and whatever ingredients she has lurking in the fridge/freezer/pantry. It is humbling to watch. My father, too, is no stranger in the kitchen & once upon a lifetime ago, I had a roommate who was a clone of Martha Stewart {that isn’t enough credit, Amelie tried recipes, created recipes and improved recipes ALL the time!}
One would think that because I was surrounded by such greatness in the kitchen, I too would be a great chef. But the reality is that I am a rockstar sous chef, my own cooking skills and ability to create lovely meals, desserts & foodie treats are on the lacking side. But just as I sing even though I am absolutely tone deaf, I continue to cook and try to create meals and improve my own pallette.
the finished product. delicious!
Recently I took a no-brainer recipe, added Kalamata Olives and made Olive Bread. FROM SCRATCH! I am excited to say, it was DELICIOUS! I used self-rising flour {maybe a little cheat, if Thomas Keller were the judge} and a mere three other ingredients — so easy, I am almost embarrassed to share my secret!
All you will need to make this at home is 3 cups self rising flour, 1/2 cup sugar, a 12oz beer, and a 1/4 cup of melted butter. That. Is. It!!
First, preheat your oven to 350. Then, in a bowl mix the flour, sugar & the beer. I was at my parents house and my mother was adamant that I shouldn’t use a light beer, so I used a Grolsch – but you can choose the brew of your own choice. Be wild!
Because I wanted to add a little more flavor to the bread, I took Kalamata Olives, pitted & sliced them {know that you can buy your olives already pitted and 
sliced, I will do this in the future…} and threw them into the bread batter. I will tell you that bread batter is a little sticky so I didn’t dump the whole mid sized bowl of my olives in at once, I dropped some in, stirred it around, dropped more, etc. My hope was to maximize the spacing of the olives as opposed to 
being the one lucky bread lottery winner {or loser, depending} who received all the olives on their slice.
Pour batter into a greased loaf pan and bake for 40 minutes at 350. At the 40 minute mark pull the golden bread out and pour the melted butter over and then place back into the oven for about 5-10 minutes.
Leave it to cool in the loaf pan a couple minutes and then you should be able to just dump the loaf on a cooling rack and let it cool a bit longer before slicing it, or ripping apart the corner. I’m thinking next time, I am going to try adding sun-dried tomatoes {drained} and some flavorful, complementary cheese. My mouth is watering just thinking about it!
xo, dk