Easy Olive Cheese Bread Recipe • The Wicked Noodle (2024)

This incredibly simple olive cheese bread takes just 15 minutes to prepare – just start with a baked French bread loaf, apply the spread and bake!

Updated: Sept. 15, 2022

Types of Olives to Use

This recipe uses green California manzanilla olives but feel free to substitute for another type of olive. You can also experiment with adding other olive varieties to the mix if you want to get a multi-color look for the spread when plating. Here are a few I’d recommend.

• Ascolano
• Gaeta
• Kalamata
• Mission
• Piccoline
• Pimento stuff green
• Sevillano

One great hack for making olive bread is to smoke your olives. You can do this using a grill and toasting for 20 minutes or so, and season to taste when the smoking is done. You’ll want to set your grill to the “smoke” setting if one is available. But you do not NEED to smoke the olives to completely enjoy this recipe, it’s just a nice extra.

Ingredients

• French bread loaf (ciabatta is a good substitute bread)
• Cream Cheese
• Unsalted butter
• Mayonnaise
• Garlic clove
• Shredded cheddar cheese
• Olives
• Green onions

(Scroll down to the bottom for the printable recipe card with exact measurements and instructions.)

How to Make Olive Cheese Bread

1. Slice French bread in half lengthwise,
2. Mix together the filling consisting of cream cheese, butter, mayonnaise, garlic, cheddar, green olives and green onions.
3. Spread mixture onto the cut sides of bread.
4. Bake for 20-30 minutes
5. Cut bread in slices and serve.

Room Temperature Ingredients

It may be good to let your ingredients come to room temperature before you start the prep. Chopping your olives to size may depend on your preferences. Do you like smaller pieces that are easier to manage as a spread? Or do you want larger olive chunks that make them more of a punctuation in the overall dish rather than all through the mixture? You don’t have to mince garlic if you are in a hurry, you can always buy a squeeze bottle of pre-minced garlic to add instead.

You can experiment with adding other olive varieties to the mix if you want to get a multi-color look for the spread when plating.

Easy Olive Cheese Bread Hacks

There are some good things to know about this recipe in general, but one thing we should mention right away is that we’re not teaching you how to bake a loaf of bread with olives in the dough.

This recipe is for a creamy spread you’ll put on top of a French loaf; you may just get hooked on this as a fun midweek alternative to your usual lunch or dinner fare. Yes, baking a loaf of olive bread is a fun adventure, but the name of this recipe is EASY Olive Bread, so we’re skipping all that time-consuming kneading and dough proofing in favor of getting right to the dish itself.

Easy Olive Bread: Vegan Options?

Our recipe here is decidedly carnivorous, but you can swap out all the cheese, cream, butter, and mayonnaise for their vegan or vegetarian-friendly equivalents. If you go the vegan route, try making this olive bread once before you need to serve it to others; you may need to try a different brand of vegan substitute for cream, butter, or cheese to get the flavor and consistency to your liking.

Not all vegan substitutes are alike and some may not fare as well used in some recipes. Fortunately this recipe doesn’t require you to cook or prepare any vegan substitutes (they are all fairly basic) as long as you have access to them at your local grocery.

Other Easy Appetizers

• Imitation Crab Ceviche
• Patatas Bravas
• Easy Hummus Dip – Salsa, Greek, or Mexican
• Korean Meatball Sliders

Easy Olive Cheese Bread

Yield: 14 Slices

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 25 minutes

See Also

Iced Green Tea Lemonade (Starbucks Copycat Recipe) - Oh, How Civilized

Total Time: 35 minutes

Pressed for time? This recipe is a great option--Olive Cheese Bread comes together quickly and would be a great starter at any gathering.

Ingredients

• 1 loaf French bread, sliced in half lengthwise
• 8 oz. cream cheese, softened
• ¼ cup unsalted butter, softened
• ½ cup mayonnaise
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
• 10 oz. green CA Ripe Olives, chopped
• 2 green onions, chopped

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Slice French bread in half lengthwise,
3. Mix together cream cheese, butter and mayonnaise until thoroughly combined.
4. Add garlic; stir well to distribute. Add cheddar, chopped green olives and green onions; stir to combine.
5. Spread mixture onto the cut sides of bread.
6. Bake for 20-30 minutes, until cheese is hot and bubbly and starting to brown.
7. Cut bread into 2 inch slices and serve.

Notes

Number of slices will vary by size of French bread and how big the slices are cut.

Nutrition Information:

Yield: 14Serving Size: 1
Amount Per Serving:Calories: 320Total Fat: 23gSaturated Fat: 10gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 12gCholesterol: 44mgSodium: 558mgCarbohydrates: 20gFiber: 1gSugar: 2gProtein: 9g

This data was provided and calculated by Nutritionix.