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I have made a variety of sourdough breads with nuts and with nuts and dried fruits. For some examples, see:

San Francisco-style Sourdough Bread with Walnuts and Figs

San Francisco-style Sourdough Bread with Walnuts and Sour Cherries

Potato-Nut Bread from South Tyrol (Thanks, Salome!)

This weekend's breads (mountain dog's formula seen here: Cherry Pecan Pain au Levain.)

I have liked them all. For the past couple of years, when I bake these I have used just a bit less than 20% (baker's percentages, of course.) fruit and the same percentage nuts. Looking through some of my newer bread books, I noticed a number of sourdough breads with nuts and dried fruits that used 1.5 to 2 times the proportions of them as I had been using. So, I thought I would take one of my known formulas and simple double the nuts and fruit. How could it be bad? 

My base formula was the one for Walnuts and figs. (See the link, above.) But I had just bought some lovely pecans, so I weighed out 200g and toasted them for 6 minutes at 300dF and made Sourdough bread with pecans and dried figs.

The dough looked awful lumpy, even when the loaves were proofed and ready to bake. I dunno about this ....

The bake took about 10 minutes longer than usual for a bâtard this size, presumably because the extra figs evaporated more water, thus keeping the loaes cooler. Maybe. But, the loaves had better bloom than usual for this type of bread, the crumb looked pretty nice, and the taste was wonderful. (It passed the critical "Susan leaves the dinner table to cut herself another slice" test.)

I also baked a couple loaves of My San Francisco Sourdough Quest, Take 4.

A good baking weekend. I hope yours was too.

Happy baking!

David

I made a spelt loaf from 100% spelt including the starter.  I built the starter from an existing rye starter with an initial 4 g subsequently building to 100% hydration 100% spelt starter.  I then used 5g of that to build to the 165 g required for the formula.  I used the suggested formula that dragon posted in the thread "Spelt Starter" in October 2015. 

The caution that is emphasized from dragon and anyone working with spelt is the speed of proofing.  It is well to pay close attention to the loaf both in the bulk ferment and the final prove.  Fortunately I did note that part because  I was surprised at the speed.  I put the dough in the basement (apprx 18°C - no higher than 20°) at 9:00 pm to bulk ferment.  By 4 am it had risen considerably.  I folded and pre-shaped at 5:00 am and shaped and placed in the oven (very clumsily- hence the very odd shape.  Halloween? ) at 5:30 am.  The finished product is above.

Despite the fact that I ended up juggling the dough on the transfer to the baking vessel, the rise was far more than I expected from the thin starter that spelt seems to produce.  I am looking forward to the taste test.

Hey Everybody,
I haven't been very active here lately, but thought the Freshloafians might appreciate a recent article that was written about me and my mobile bakery in Bread Magazine.  Click on the photo below to see the article.

Photos are by: Tim Goessman, Stephanie, and yours truly ;)

Enjoy.

-Mark

Here were my weekend bakes. I took these to a picnic—one loaf sliced up, the other given to the host. I'm incredibly pleased with the way these came out. Everything from the crumb to the crust to the color was ace in my book.