Mediterranean Olive Bread Scrolls - the Final Bake and a glimpse into my chaotic kitchen

Ready to proof

I have been a little busy of late. This is a bit of an understatement. In the past week my kitchen has been replaced - massive woo-hoo! The old kitchen was plain nasty and I have always been too embarrassed to share any pictures of it with anybody out there, but now that it has gone for good I feel I can admit to the mess I used to work in! Anyone who knows me knows that I am messy beyond belief - if there is a flat surface available I will put something onto it. And then something on top of that. This was massively compounded by my kitchen having far too little storage space, and even then, some of it was not usable - drawers that fall off their runners when you pull them out?!? So it is no surprise that my kitchen is was messy too. I vow to try harder now!

Nasty old kitchen!

With having no kitchen for a week, and therefore no easy means of food preparation meals have not been inspiring of late at all. However, I wanted to make lunch preparation as easy and painless as possible so I decided that interesting bread rolls that didn't need anything more adding to them were the way to go. There is a glut of peppers available at the moment and so I took my bread down the Mediterranean route - roasted peppers, tomatoes and olives and an olive oil based dough too. 

Why scrolls? Well, just because they look pretty!

Mediterranean Olive Bread Scrolls
Ingredients
3 large peppers - mixed colours if you want - I used red, orange and yellow
large handful of cherry tomatoes
green olives (or whichever you prefer)
380g strong white bread flour
10g extra virgin olive oil
270g warm water
1tsp instant yeast
1tsp salt

Method

- Before starting the dough I firstly started to roast the peppers and tomatoes. Carry on until they are soft then leave to cool before peeling off the pepper skins and chopping into pieces.

- For the bread dough, put the flour, olive oil, water, yeast and salt into a large bowl and bring together as a dough. It will be very soft and sticky. Leave it for a while (10-15 minutes)

- Grease the work surface well and knead the dough briefly. Leave 10-15 minutes and repeat the kneading process. Oil is your friend here - it will stop the dough sticking to your hands and work top and make it possible to work.

- Leave to rise until doubled (I left mine on top of the warm oven so it didn't take that long).

- Pat out to a rectangle (my dough was quite resistant, it would far rather have stayed as a ball thank you very much...) and scatter over the roasted chopped pepper and roasted cherry tomatoes leaving a gap along one side - see photo below. I also scattered over olives too - but forgot to photograph that step - you can see the olives in the slices though.

- Roll into long snake and then chop across the snake to give your scrolls.

- Allow these to proove until risen.

- Whilst prooving, preheat the oven to Gas 6/200C.

- Bake for about 35 minutes or so at Gas 6.

- Allow to cool on a wire rack.

Spread with roasted peppers and tomatoes - leave a gap along one edge

These were great - soft but resilient dough generously flecked with roasted vegetables and olives made a very satisfying lunch, and they would be great with a handful of feta cheese too. It was very easy to just grab what I needed from the freezer each morning - no hassle! They would also be perfect with soup. These were the very last thing I baked in my old oven. I'll perhaps share some photos of the new one - maybe even when it's in action... (I know that seems silly, but I'm very impressed by my new oven with its glass door and internal light! Ah modern technology!)

Ready for slicing

I have to apologise for the poor quality of the photographs - my usual method of obtaining better lit photographs was unavailable and this is the best I could do. Normal service will hopefully be resumed shortly. 

Ready for baking - puffed up

So I now have a challenge - a new oven - fan - so the next things you see (apart from those waiting in the archives) may be crispy burnt offerings as I attempt to get to grips with a foreign beast. But at least I'll be able to see when my cakes are burning..... (this is the first time I've had an oven with a glass rather than solid door!)

As peppers and tomatoes are in season I am sending these to Ren at Fabulicious Food for Simple and In Season.

I am also sending them to Javelin Warriors 'Made with Love Mondays'.