A weekly survey of bread in San Francisco ― the baked and the fried, the
artisan and the novelty.
Olive Ciabatta
Source: Bakers of Paris stand, Inner Sunset Sunday farmers' market (also at Upper Haight, Divisadero, and Fort Mason markets)
Price: $4 (also available as dinner rolls)
Toast-appropriateness: 3/10
When SFoodie first sliced into Bakers of Paris's olive ciabatta, we you wondered if we had gotten the wrong loaf. An olive bread without olives? The surface of the bread wasn't mottled with black splotches ― like all
ciabatta loaves, it just looked slightly rumpled and puffy, as if it
were once a proudly domed country loaf that had deflated after one too many
nights snorting yeast and chasing baguettes. Inside, there were no hollow green circles, no squashed purple fruits.
But then we looked closer: There, hidden amid the crumbs and stuck to the sides of the marble-sized air bubbles, were tiny black flecks. And when we cut the bread into airy, crust-rimmed slices and began to eat it, the earthy, full aroma of dry-cured black olives came through clearly. In fact, we usually find dry-cured olives too pungent and salty to eat on their own. Atomized and dispersed, though, the olive tasted of ripe fruit and the spices in its marinade. Once we began smearing Andante melange cheese on slices, the ciabatta disappeared quickly.
