Walnut

 Wanting to bake another sourdough bread with a larger portion of whole rye, I started searching on the internet, and came across this recipe:

http://beginningwithbread.wordpress.com/2008/11/08/sourdough-rye-with-walnuts/

This was interesting because I had some walnuts left from something else. Not quite enough, so I added some sunflower seeds. Roasted them a bit.

I had already fed my sourdough starter and put it in the refridgerator before it reached its peak. The recipe mentions adding instant yeast in the final dough. I omitted that, because I wanted it pure sourdough.

Around midnight last Saturday I made the levain, whole rye, water, my starter. Did add a bit more than in the recipe. Left this out to ferment. 14.00 in the afternoon on Sunday I made the final dough, but did not let it rise outside, but instead kept it in the refridgerator (I had a party, so I didn't have time to bake it then). A 24 hour rise in the refridgerator later I took it out, formed a batard and let it proof for about 2,5 hours on a couche. 
Baked following recipe, and this came out: 

Update: Crumb photo's:

I didn't want to cut into it. Not then. I thought that there might be something purple or green or both inside. It could easily have been a purple people eater or even something much, much worse. I had to wait until the morning light - didn't want to be crippled by darkness if it was something horrible ........and emerged very hungry. I would have needed every advantage to escape if it had attacked. I contained it in a brown paper bag so it stayed nice and comfy, unperturbed...... and had no reason to attack anyone ......until it was too late......and the bread knife struck when it was least expected. Sleep well my friends in bread. We dealt with this purple menace on the morrow.  We lived through the night.

The brown bag containment field worked overnight I am pleased to say and once under the bread knife, it was purple after all!!! The cell phone camera just doesn't do it justice. This is one handsome round of bread and the smell is unique but nice as well. Even when using the home ground whole meal wheat berries, the crumb is not dense, but slightly open, soft and moist too. The home grown sage comes through well and the walnuts, which I thought would be too many and too much, are also very tasty and in balance. What a great concoction Phil has pulled from his Hulking bag of tricks!  Have had it plain, toasted and with goat cheese this morning and it just grows on you subtely. Before you know it - its nearly gone - but I did freeze half of it. I cut your formula in half and got a small round. It didn't spring as much as I thought it would in the cast iron enameled pot I used but I think the pot was too big and I should have used a smaller one. It did rise well in the basket during final proof. I did let it go 1 and 3/4 hours instead of the 1 hour in Phils formula until it passed the poke test. This is a sophisticated, fined and elegant yet rustic kind of bread that is in a new class - the purple one.....a bread that people want to eat. Very nice indeed Phil.

A few weeks ago I made a Sourdough with Candied Orange that was a huge hit around here. The arrival of a pullman pan coincided with my wife's demands to make something like that again. This is based on PR's BBA Panettone with the following changes:

• 33% of the flour was home-milled hard red and white wheat in a 50/50 mix
• I used more dried fruit -- 2 oz each of dried golden raisins, cranberries and cherries soaked overnight in Kraken rum with Mandarin Orange and Vanilla extracts.
• I used more nuts -- 2 oz each of pecans, walnuts and almond slivers that I toasted beforehand.
• Even after extended rising time, the loaf wasn't filling the large (13" x 4.5" x 4.5") pullman pan, so I put it into an unheated oven, turned to 325, and left for 1 hour 45 mins. I will go longer next time, but I was worried about burning it. As you can see, it rose perfectly.
• For the candied fruit, I used 1.5 cups of candied tangerine peel. I was happier with the orange peel, I'll use it next time. The tangerine peel was thinner and a little more bitter.

We'll be eating breakfast (and probably dessert) off of this for awhile. I may try making french toast with the last bits.

Mini-loaf madness continues! This is Reinhart's basic sourdough, made from sourdo.com San Francisco culture that's been fed only with KA bread flour. With the addition of 5 oz of chopped dried figs and 4 oz of walnuts, the bread is excellent, but has no real sour. I'm not sure I'm continuing with this particular starter...

This is the BBA basic sourdough to which was added 2 diced granny smith apples, 4 oz of toasted walnuts and 3 oz of small-dice parmesan and asiago cheese. The starter was KA New England that had been fed 50/50 with KA bread flour and home-ground hard red wheat. The final flour addition was 15% WW, 5% Rye and 80% KA. It got a stretch-and-fold at 15, 45, 90 and 120 minutes, then proofed for another 3 hours. The final shaped loaves proofed a little over two hours before being glazed with egg yolk and baked. Baking time was a total of 45 minutes to get the internal temp up -- I'm sure there was a lot of moisture from the apples. It's yummy. Yes, it really is slightly purple (from the walnuts I believe).

One of my favorite sourdough variations is inspired by a combination of the classic blue cheese and walnut sourdough (which I've never made because I don't like blue cheese) and a twisted sourdough with chunks of dark chocolate that I got from a bakery in Chelsea Market in Manhatten on a family vacation some years back. The combination: sourdough with dark chocolate and walnuts.

It's best as a breakfast bread: a little too sweet for dinner, but too bread-y for dessert. The dark chocolate is overpowering when melted, so the trick is to bake it the night before you want to eat it, and let it cool overnight so the chocolate hardens. The taste is delectable: the sour of the bread and the chewiness of the crust combines with the crunchy nuts, and the bitter-sour flavors of the dark chocolate, all infused with the walnut oil.

I've made it with several different sourdough formulas, but last night I baked up a batch based on David Snyder's famous San Joaquin Sourdough, to good effect.

Formula: (All credit goes to dmsnyder's post here)

• 450g King Arthur AP flour (90%)
• 25g WW Flour (5%)
• 25g Whole Rye Flour (5%)
• 150g Active Starter at 100% hydration (30%)
• 360g Water (72%)
• 10g Salt (2%)
• 125g Coursely chopped walnuts (or broken by hand) (25%)
• 100g Ghirardelli 60% Cacao Bittersweet Chips (20%) (ideal for their shape, and for being excellent chocolate a a bargain price)

1. Mix flours, water and starter (David likes to mix the water and starter first; I don't know if it matters).  Autolyze 20-60 minutes.
2. Add salt, walnuts and chocolate, then do 30 stretch-and-folds in the bowl.
3. Cover tightly and ferment 3 hours at room temperature.  Repeat the stretch-and-folds in the bowl at 30, 60 and 90 minutes, then a french-fold on the board at 135 and 180 minutes.
4. Place in refrigerator for 18-21 hours.  
5. Remove dough from refrigerator, divide in half and pre-shape as rounds.  Allow to rest 1 hour.
6. Shape as batards or boules, and place in a couche or banneton, as appropriate.  Preheat oven to 500 degrees with baking stone.  
7. Proof loaves 45 minutes, then transfer to parchment on a sheet pan/peel, score and load in oven.  Steam using your favorite method, and lower temperature to 460.  
8. Bake 30 minutes, turning loaves and removing any steaming apparatus after 15.  Turn off oven and crack the door for 5 minutes, then remove loaves to a cooling rack.  Cool at least 8 hours before eating.

Hey All,

Haven't posted in a bit and wanted to share with you something I baked for the Yelp 2nd Annual Bake-Off on Saturday, 5/15/10 in NYC.  I was up against some stiff competion with a dizzying array of sweets and savory baked goods...  I figured that I wouldn't win against those, but I took comfort that everybody went back for 2nd and 3rd helpings of my bread...

Here's what was left the Cranberry Apple Cider Bread with Walnuts that I baked:

Sorry I don't have a shot of the whole loaf...  It had this cool leaf pattern slashing...  Anyways, here's the formula below:

90% AP

10% WW

37% Water

37% Hard Apple Cider (alcoholic)

2% Kosher Salt

30% Stiff levain (60% hydration)

15% Dried Granny Smith Apples

15% Dried Cranberries

15% Toasted Walnuts

1/4 tsp instant or active dry yeast per 500g of flour

Directions:

12:00pm - Peel and cut apples into 3/8" cubes, mix with a little lemon juice to prevent browning, place on parchment lined pan, dry in 250F oven for 1 hour.

3:45pm - Mix all ingredients in large mixing bowl with wooden spoon, hands, cover let rest for 30 minutes.

4:30pm - Knead in fruits and nuts (no more than 1 minute), cover let rest.

5:00pm - Turn dough, cover, let rest.

5:30pm - Turn dough, cover, let rest.

6:00pm - Turn dough, cover, let rest.

6:30pm - Turn dough, cover, let rest.

7:00pm - Turn dough, cover, let rest.

8:00pm - Divide, shape, proof.  Arrange stones in oven along with steam pan.  Preheat to 500F.

9:00pm - Turn loaves out onto lightly floured peel, slash as desired, place directly onto stone, add 1 cup water to steam pan, bake for 15 minutes at 450F, rotate and bake for 50 minutes at 420F, or until internal temp reaches 205F.  Cool completely before cutting.

**Notes:  I used 1270g flour for this recipe which gave me a dough yield of about 3250g.  I divided this into 2 equal pieces and formed boules.  Your baking time may be different if you make a smaller quantity.

Tim