Ham, cheese and olive savory loaf is a quick rustic ultra-soft bread/loaf, a great classic of French home cooking. Perfect for quick lunches, picnics, barbecues, or even cubed as an appetizer.
What is a French “cake sale”?
In France, we use the word cake for any sweet or savory preparation baked in a loaf mold. We prepare all kinds of “cake salés” (lit. savory cake) including this one which has a very classic filling: ham, cheese, and black or green olives.
But also as for quiches, we prepare cake salés with all kind of savory ingredients, the ones we like or those we have on hands, even leftover sautéed vegetables for example.
On this blog you can find 3 other cake sale recipes: with roasted bell pepper (I fry beforehand with olive oil. olive, garlic, onion, and Provence herbs, all the flavors of South-France), another with tuna and sundried tomatoes, and one with zucchini and feta cheese.
How to serve savory loaf
Those savory loaves, aka cakes salés, are perfect for a light lunch, eaten with green salad and vinaigrette dressing, or all kind of raw vegetables that we call assiette de crudités in French.
They are also often prepared for picnics. And as you know our love for pre-dinner drink l’apéritif, cube cake leftovers to grab with a drink. If you especially prepare a savory loaf for l’apéro, wait until it’s cold ti cube otherwise it might be difficult to cut nice cubes.
By the way I’ve written an article on all you need to know to prepare l’apéro as in France with many recipes you can easily make.
A few words on the recipe
I’m giving the ingredients proportions for this recipe, made over and over dozens of times, each time very soft and aerated as you can see in the photos.
First prepare the batter
I don’t use too much flour and (a bit of a baking powder) so that the bread is not too heavy, a mix of olive oil and milk (which you can replace with plant-based milk).
I find that dairy makes the cake much lighter and softer than the white wine that is found in many French recipes (but you can always substitute here if you wish, with the same amount of ml).
3 eggs and are enough.
Then the filling
I usually ask my butcher to cut me a very thick slice of Jambon de Paris ham that I cut into large cubes (which I prefer to the cubes of ham we find in French supermarket, that I find a little small, but when I have only that, that works just as well).
For cheese I like to grated Comté cheese (which I prefer to Emmental or Gruyère, a personal taste but which does not really change the result of the recipe).
Finally for olives, your choice: green olives, black olives, or a mix of both. Today it was green olives.
Ham, Cheese and Olive Savory Loaf, French Cake Salé
Ingredients
- 150 gr ham
- 150 gr olives green or black
- 100 gr cheese grated cheese, Gruyère, Emmental or Comté
- 150 gr flour
- 3 eggs
- 100 ml olive oil
- 100 ml milk
- 11 gr baking powder
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180°C / 350°F.
- In a large bowl, break the 3 eggs, whisk. Add flour and baking powder, combine. Then add olive oil and milk, combine.
- Cube ham, pit the olives and cut them in half.
- Finally stir in ham, olives and grated cheese.
- Grease and flour a bread tin (or place parchment paper in the mold). Pour in the preparation and bake for about 40 minutes at 180°C / 350°F. Check if it’s cooked by inserting the blade of a knife, it should come out dry.
Bon appétit !
And same for sweet preparations, the specific word cake used in French means that the cake has been baked in a loaf tin.
The most common recipes are cake marbré Marble vanilla and chocolate cake (I have a recipe but not of the correct shape, shame on me!! See here), cake au citron/lemon (see my recipe here, a must-try), and cake aux fruits confits (I’ll post the recipe soon).
