I liked the Whole Wheat Walnut Bread I got back in July from Acme Bread Company in Berkeley so much that I decided to try to duplicate it.  I posted photos of the Acme walnut loaf previously in my description of my July bread pilgrimage. 

I found a description of the bread and it's ingredients on acme's website: http://www.acmebread.com/bread/whole_wheat.

The recipe I came up with after a couple of attempts is as follows:

Whole Wheat Walnut Sourdough

Ingredients:

100g of whole wheat starter (containing 50g water, 25g whole wheat flour, and 25g white flour)

350g whole wheat flour

100g white bread flour

250g water

1.5 teaspoons salt

0.5 teaspoons diastatic malt powder

200g walnuts

Procedure:

After a first attempt was so dry the loaf cracked up the middle I concluded the walnuts soak up a lot of water.  Soaking them in advance in hot water and draining them in a collander before adding to the dough seems to overcome that.

I mixed the dough in a stand mixer, let stand until it rose, and baked it in a dutch oven, about 25 minutes at 450F, with the cover off in the last minutes for browning.. 

Result:

It came out pretty good, maybe not the equal of the Acme loaf but very tasty with butter or cheese!

^The loaf

^The crumb

^The cooled loaf in the cooker

After seeing http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/4507/concord-grape-focaccia, I knew I had to try it, and grapes were on sale at the grocery store. It's cooling now, dinner soon!

Organic Whole Wheat Bread with Walnuts and Raisins. This is a recipe by Hamelman (Bread a Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes). I substituted pecans for walnuts and golden raisins for regular organic raisins. I made this for my children.  It is full of goodness, from whole wheat, walnuts, to raisins. They enjoy it for breakfast with organic butter and honey as I write this. :) I find myself more and more baking using recipes from this book. And so far love all the breads I tried.

It is a beautiful bread for breakfast. We, as family love  to spread butter and honey on slice of this bread. 

The crumb:

bemonkey

This German 100% spelt bread is one of my most favorite loaves. When I bake it to sell to our natural food store, I always make one extra loaf for us.

This is made with a biga, but a sourdough would certainly be good, too. And, of course, you can also work just with the soaker and S & F.

I know many American find the idea of using bread spice quite outlandish, or even repulsive (thinking, perhaps, of the caraway overdoses in some Jewish ryes) - but PLEASE don't follow the old German adage "Was der Bauer nicht kennt, dass frisst er nicht" (= what the farmer doesn't know he won't eat") - at least TRY it with the anise and fennel. These spices are not predominant, but add a subtle very nice flavor to the bread.

DINKEL-WALNUSSBROT - SPELT WALNUT BREAD

SOAKER
47 g spelt chops                     (1.66 oz)
180 g spelt flour                     (6.35 oz)
4 g salt    (1/2 tsp.)                (0.14 oz)     
210 g buttermilk                     (7.41 oz)
 
BIGA
227 g spelt flour                      (8 oz)
1 g instant yeast  (1/4 tsp)       (0.04 oz)
170 g water                             (6 oz)
 
FINAL DOUGH
57 g spelt flour                         (2 oz)
12 g agave nectar or honey       (0.42 oz)
7 g salt                                    (0.25 oz)
5 g instant yeast                       (0.18 oz)
2 g anise seeds                         (0.07 oz)
2 g fennel seeds                        (0.07 oz)
70 g walnuts, coarsely chopped  (2.47 oz)

DAY 1
In the morning, prepare soaker and biga. Refrigerate biga.

In the evening, prepare final dough: mix all ingedients (except for the walnuts) at low speed for 1 - 2 min., until coarse ball forms. Then knead at medium-low speed for 4 min., feeding the nuts slowly to the dough. Let dough rest for 5 min., resume kneading for 1 more min. (or work just with a soaker and S & F). Transfer to lightly oiled container, and place in refrigerator overnight.

DAY 2

Remove dough from refrigerator 2 hrs. before using.

Preheat oven to 425 F/220 C. Prepare for hearth baking with stone and steam pan.
Shape batard, place in banneton, and let rise to 1 1/2 times its original size. Turn out onto peel or parchment lined baking sheet. Slash.

Bake bread at 350 for 20 minutes, steaming with 1 cup of boiling water. Rotate 180 degrees, remove steam pan and continue baking for another 30 minutes (internal temperature should be at least 195 F, and loaf should sound hollow when thumped on the bottom)

Let cool on wire rack.

3/3/11 updated to include U.S. units

I thought:  I have just enough time to bake one more goodie.  With both our son and daughter coming home for Christmas, what could be better than a celebration?  Since I just got the BBA off the bookmobile, why not use Peter Reinhart's celebration loaf, the Cranberry Walnut Celebration Loaf to be exact?  Well, mostly exact.  I did not have any real buttermilk, but we have some powdered buttermilk in the refrigerator, so I substituted that instead.  I bought the orange extract for this loaf, deciding I would like that better than the lemon, and I am sure I made the right choice there.  I also decided to soak the dried cranberries before making this up, so I put them in a bowl with about 1/3 cup of brandy and enough hot water to cover them, for about an hour.  I mostly drained them before adding them to the dough.  I should have drained them a little better.

This was not a overly difficult formula but I had some trouble with the hydration.  At first the dough came out quite dry and I added several (4 or 5) tablespoons of water before it seemed right. I later realized this was because I used powdered buttermilk, and failed to adjust the water.  At least I failed to acknowledge the water required, but I did add it since I got to the prescribed dough consitency.  Then I added the cranberries that I should have drained more thoroughly and it got too wet.  A scant tablespoon of flour brought it around and made me happy.  The cranberries and walnuts were a little trouble to get well distributed too, but in the end it seems to have turned out well.

It took several minutes longer than the recipe called for to reach the internal temperature target, but the loaf developed beautiful color by the time it was finally done.  The aroma while cooking was redolent of oranges and cranberries mixed in with that "There's bread in the oven!" smell I imagine we all love so much.  It was a great house to go to bed in last night while this loaf cooled.  Here it is:

Cranberry-Walnut Celebration Loaf

And of course, the crumb:

We could not resist trying a couple of slices this morning.  It has a delightful texture with a tender and creamy crumb, plenty of fruit and nuts, and if anything, a bit too strong an orange overtone to it.  I think I will reduce the orange extract next time, or at least measure extra carefully to see if it was my mistake.  It is not overpowering, but it is a bit strong to our taste.  Regardless, we are planning to make sure there is enough left over for turkey sandwiches on Sunday.

Merry Christmas to all
OldWoodenSpoon

I recently added some sundried tomatoes into my dough. Unfortunately, the distribution was uneven, and I ended up with lots of sundried tomatoes right at the bottom of my boule, must have been pushed down when i close the seam side.

So, any ideas on how to evenly distribute any ingredients, including chopped nuts, dried fruits evenly into the dough?

I recently tried some orange cranberry bread at my local grocery's bakery (Wegman's), which is being produced for the holiday season.  It was nice, but not exactly the direction I would have gone with it, and not something I wanted to eat a great deal of.  It was very orange-y, quite sweet, and topped with coarse sugar.  I began thinking about how I would do things differently and eventually put together this formula.  After a little trial and error, I'm very happy with this bread, so I thought I would share. 

The sweet potato and small amount of butter makes for a very soft, but still satisfyingly strong crumb, and the crust is medium, golden, and very pleasantly soft.  I'm a fan of hearty hearth breads with crust edging on charred and bursting with seeds, so this is a nice change from the norm for me.  The cranberries are ideal for me at 30%, and walnuts are present but not so abundant as to weight down the loaf or overpowering the orange and sweet potato.  I'm very pleased with how this most recent version is balanced.  It's delicious on it's own, with butter or cream cheese, toasted with jam (nothing too sweet), or soaking up the yolks of over-easy eggs, my personal favorite.

I'd like to hear any feedback or suggestions for this bread, if anyone has thoughts.  Formula and instructions are below. 

Thanks!

Logan

Biga

                                        %         Weight

Bread Flour                        50         50g
Whole Wheat Flour             50         50g
Instant Yeast                     0.5        0.5g (1/8 tsp for me)
Water                                70         70g

- Mix ingredients and ferment covered at room temperature about 3 hours, then refrigerate overnight. I have held the biga for this bread up to about 3 days with no problems. Remove from fridge an hour or two before mixing the final dough to get rid of the chill. Or, just adjust your water temperature to counteract the cool biga (I prefer just to let it warm up on it's own).

Final Dough

                                          %         Weight

Biga                                    50        170g
Bread Flour                          100       340g
Water                                  54        184g
Sweet Potatoes                     43        146g
Unsalted Butter                     4          14g
Salt                                     2.1        7g
Instant Yeast                        1          3.4g (just shy of a teaspoon for me)
Sweetened Dried Cranberries  30         102
Walnuts, toasted                   20         64
Zest of 1 orange

- Peel and boil the sweet potato until soft, then drain and mash. Mix the butter in while mashing, and allow the mixture to cool completely. Combine flour, biga (chop into small pieces first for easier mixing), water, yeast, salt, orange zest, and the sweet potato/butter mixture and mix to form a fairly shaggy dough. I like to mix the water and orange zest into the sweet potato/butter mixture, and then add that mixture to the dry ingredients and biga. Works well, but I don't believe it matters much.

NOTE: if your oranges are not the best or you want more orange in the bread, substitute some or all of the water out for orange juice. I used about a third orange juice and two thirds water with my last batch and it was ideal. I suspect when the good florida oranges come into season this won't be necessary, but I'll have to wait and see.

- Knead until very smooth and somewhat elastic. I used a KA mixer with a dough hook set around 3 for 10-12 minutes. Then add the cranberries and walnuts and mix at low speed or incorporate by hand. My mixer is reluctant to distribute these, so I knead by hand for the last few minutes.

- Ferment until roughly doubled, 2-3 hours is typical for me.

- Divide and shape the dough. This is enough for two smallish boules, a shade over 500g each. Rolls would also be nice, and I thought I might try a braid next time.

- Proof about 45-90 minutes, until slightly pillowy and roughly doubled (careful of overproofing though, this dough is quite soft and when I first started tinkering with it I had a couple runaway proofing experiences). I proof boules freestanding on parchment directly on a sheet pan, covered loosely with plastic wrap or produce bags.

- Preheat the oven to 400, no steam or stone is necessary.  Also, this bread does not benefit from scoring.

- Bake the loaves on a sheet pan for 20 minutes at 400, and then rotate the pan if your oven requires it. Bake for an additional 10-20 minutes, I usually count on 12-14 in my oven. I pull them when they're nice and golden all over, sound hollow, and reach at least 190 in the center. These times are just for boules, so if you makes rolls or another shape, you'll want to adjust accordingly.

- Boules should cool for about an hour, but after that I like them best at their very freshest. This will keep in plastic bags quite well for about 2 days, and if any lasts past then it would be good for toasting.

The Results:

My slicing wasn't perfect, but you get the idea.

For a little scale.

My ideal breakfast.

This weekend's bake, per my wife's request, was a walnut stout bread.  The recipe that I used (note that all measurements are volumes, not weights) can be found here: http://www.kitchenlink.com/mf/2/4133.  We first saw it printed in the Kansas City Star some years ago; the link attributes it to the Houston Chronicle.  It's probably one of those recipes that was reprinted widely, since it is so good.  Oh, and don't miss the Cheddar-Ale spread recipe at the bottom of the page.  It is wonderful with this bread!

There are a couple of insights that I can offer, having made this bread on several occasions.  It is essentially a rye bread, which means that the crumb is very smooth and somewhat dense.  The dough will be sticky as you handle it.  The recipe suggests adding flour during kneading to control the stickiness but I elected to knead with one hand and clean the countertop (and my hand) with a plastic dough scraper.  It helps to keep the finished bread from being too dry.  The recipe merely says "rye flour".  I don't know if it means white rye, medium rye, or whole rye.  In my case, whole rye flour was on hand, so that is what I used and it turned out fine.  The recipe also requires 1 Tablespoon of coriander, and that is not a misprint.  Between the coriander and the anise seed, it is a very fragrant bread.  As for the stout, I've used Guinness on previous occasions with good results.  This time, I used Boulevard Brewery's Dry Stout (local to Kansas City) with equally delicious results.  I think you could get away with using any dark beer or ale, whether stout, porter, bock or dunkel.  The flavor may shift a bit, but it wouldn't upset the overall results.  Obviously, the richer the flavor of the beer or ale, the richer the flavor of the bread.  The walnuts are, to my tastes, essential for the bread.  They contribute both flavor and a crunch that play off the other flavors and textures very nicely. 

The recommended baking time is 35-45 minutes at 375F.  I checked a loaf's temperature at the 40-minute mark and it was only about 180F, so I left it in for another 10 minutes.  If it had been taken out at the recommended time, it would have been gummy.  Since I only make this every two or three years, I haven't really experimented with different temperature/time combinations.

Here is a picture of the finished loaves:

Paul

My sweet bread-loving best friend suffered a heart attack last year, and since then I've been searching for and experimenting with lower-fat, healthy versions of his favourite recipes.  This incredibly easy moist, delicious loaf, adapted from Bonnie Stern's Best of HeartSmart Cooking is not only lower in fat, but what fat it contains is mono or polyunsaturated, which boosts HDL (good) cholesterol.