Olive Bread – A Couple Cooks

This no knead olive bread recipe tastes like it’s from a bakery but it’s so easy to make at home! It has a deliciously crispy crust, soft and chewy interior, and developed, savory flavor. Everyone will be singing its praises (every time we make it, our family can’t stop eating it).

As two professional recipe developers and cookbook authors, Alex and I always urge home cooks to learn one skill: homemade bread! There’s really nothing like pulling a golden brown loaf from the oven (the aroma in your kitchen alone is worth it!).

Here’s a bread recipe that we are head over heels for: this no knead olive bread recipe! It’s inspired by our trip to France this summer, but you can easily whip it up at home using this recipe. Every time we make this for family, everyone keeps exclaiming how good it is! Here’s everything you need to know about making olive bread at home.

How to make olive bread: an overview

Here’s the basic outline of the tasks for this olive bread recipe. The process takes 5 minutes the night before, and then about 2 hours the day of. While you do need to think ahead for the rest, this bread recipe is so much easier than our sourdough bread and or artisan bread recipe. In fact, it’s the quickest and easiest bread method we have. Here’s an outline of what you’ll have to do:

Mix, Rest overnight	5 minutes active, 12 to 18 hours hands off
Shape & proof	5 minutes active, 1 hour hands off
Bake	45 minutes, hands off
Cool	45 minutes, hands off

Making no knead bread requires a few tools. It’s easiest to make with a Dutch oven, but you can also use a pizza stone. There are several optional tools as well that make things easier, but are not required. Here’s what you need!

Large Dutch oven: Baking bread in a covered Dutch oven holds in the steam that the bread releases as it cooks. This makes an extra crispy crust and perfect rise. If you don’t have a Dutch oven, you can use a pizza stone.
Parchment paper: You’ll use parchment paper inside the Dutch oven to prevent sticking while baking.
Lame or knife: A lame or sharp knife is used for scoring the bread.
Kitchen scale: The best way to make bread is weighing the dry ingredients, which makes the most accurate measurements (we use this kitchen scale).

Dutch oven vs pizza stone

A Dutch oven is a heavy cooking pot with a lid used for braising meat and making soups and stews. You can use it on the stovetop or in the oven. All Dutch ovens are made of cast iron; some have an enamel coating that makes them easier to clean.

The Dutch oven that we use for bread is Lodge 6 Quart Cast Iron Dutch oven. Since it holds in the steam, it makes for the best crispy crust while baking. You can also use a Dutch oven for making soups, stews and more: go to our top Dutch oven recipes.

As an alternative, you can a pizza stone to bake this no knead bread! You’ll also have to create extra steam in your oven using a baking sheet and pouring boiling water onto it when you add the bread. This creates steam, which makes that crispy crust. Here’s the pizza stone we recommend. (Of course, you can also use it for our popular pizza dough recipe and all our pizza recipes!)

Olive Bread with Dutch oven in background

The flours for olive bread

For this olive bread recipe, we use a mixture of all-purpose flour (for texture) and bread flour (for strength). We find that this mix makes a moderately open crumb (those beautiful holes in the interior), a chewy crust, and tangy flavor.

Personally, we use King Arthur brand organic flour. In testing many different flours, we find it has the best and most consistent results for homemade bread recipes.

A note on olives

You can use any olives you like in this recipe: including green, black or purple olives. We like Castelvetrano olives: they’re a green olive variety grown in Sicily with a mild and fruity flavor that doesn’t overpower the bread. But you can use any type you like: Kalamata olives, black or green olives, etc.

Why the overnight rest?

This olive bread recipe requires thinking ahead 1 day: you’ll need to rest the bread dough overnight. If you’re like us, you might have trouble with thinking ahead and wonder if you can skip this step. Unfortunately, it’s essential to this recipe! Here’s why:

No knead bread requires only 1 proof. Proofing is letting the bread stand at room temperature while the leavener (in this case, yeast) does its magic to help the bread rise. Usually a proof is about 45 minutes to 1 hour. Both our sourdough bread and artisan bread require folding and “proofing” the bread multiple times. So doing only 1 proof for homemade bread is almost unheard of!
The tradeoff is resting overnight. Proofing requires a lot of time and effort to fold and proof multiple times. So to shortcut it, you can rest the bread at room temperature overnight. To us, that’s a very worthy tradeoff! You save hours of bread making time the day of baking.

How to shape the boule

The main part of making olive bread that requires technique is shaping the dough. You’ll shape it into a ball, called a boule. It’s easiest to learn how to shape the dough by watching. Here’s a video instruction for shaping the boule.

How to score the bread

The lines on top of a beautiful loaf of bread are called score lines. Scoring is slashing the top of the dough with a sharp knife to allow it to expand when baking. Here are a few tips for scoring no knead bread:

Use your sharpest knife or a lame. You’ll want the knife to be ultra sharp. We purchased a lame for this (pronounced “lahm”) since we make lots of bread recipes—but it’s totally optional.
Make shallow cuts into the top of the dough. You want to cut just the surface — if it’s too deep it collapses, if it’s too shallow it bursts.

Storing leftovers (important)

Storing homemade bread is different from store-bought, since it has no preservatives. There’s also an important thing to keep in mind:

Do not store in plastic! Placing homemade bread in plastic makes it soggy and ruins the crispy crust. Make sure to store it wrapped in cloth: a towel or a bread bag!
Store at room temperature 2 days: Once you’ve baked your olive bread, it is best eaten within 48 hours. We store ours wrapped in cloth at room temperature. Use a clean dish towel or a bread bag.
Or, freeze up to 3 months: You can also freeze olive bread. It’s easy to cut your bread in half and freeze half of it! Let it cool to room temperature, then cut it into slices and place it into a sealed bag or container.

Dietary notes

This olive bread recipe is vegetarian, vegan, and plant-based.

Olive Bread (No Knead)

5 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars 2 Stars 1 Star

No reviews

body-color.color">

This no knead olive bread recipe tastes like it’s from a professional bakery but it’s so easy to make at home! It has a deliciously crispy crust, soft and chewy interior, and developed, savory flavor. Everyone will be singing its praises (every time we make it, our family can’t stop eating it).