Mission Fig Almond & Medjool Date Cashew Sourdough
Here are some sourdough loaves of Mission Fig Almond Anise & Medjool Date Cashew.
These are all rifts of Nancy Silverton's Fig Anise Bread from The Breads of the La Brea Bakery. In the fig bread, I add about 1.5x her quantity of figs and honey-roasted almonds. In the date bread, I add about 1.5x her quantity of medjool dates and roasted cashews. In both, I adjust the hydration as necessary.
1. Ingredients for Mission Fig Almond Anise
-
2. Ingredients for Mission Fig Almond Anise
-
3. Ingredients for Medjool Date Cashew
-
4. Shaping the loaves was quite the task. I didn't adjust the hydration well enough, so incorporating the nuts and dried fruit into the loaves by hand was quite the task.
-
5. A shaped Mission Fig Almond Loaf
-
6. About to shape a Medjool Date Cashew Loaf
-
7. All loaves in their brotforms. Giving them ~30 minutes to rise before putting them into the refrigerator for an long, overnight retardation.
-
8. One of the boules after retardation. These loaves don't rise much during bulk ferment, retardation, or proofing. The final loaves are dense and chewy (with crunchy nuts). No sherry vinegar was used in the making of these breads. ;)
-
9. These are the final Medjool Date Cashew Loaves. The fig are in the background.
-
10. A fig loaf with some surface detail. (I didn't mean for it to look like a Masonic symbol, but that's what a couple people told me it looks like.)
-
11. All the loaves together, ready for the their photoshoot (and surely dreading their future fate as hiking food–they keep forever, so I take loaves with me into the mountains when I go camping/hiking).
(Sorry, but I forgot to take shots of the crumb. I slice them very thinly, like biscotti. The crumb is dense and filled with nuts and dried fruit.)