Sesame-Wheat bread and a Prune, hazelnut and fennel bread

This bread was inspired by STUinLouisa's spring cleaning post. The nuts and dried fruit in the cupboard were, unfortunately, limited to 70g of hazelnuts and 160g prunes left over from Christmas.

I decided to use these to make a small variation on the 'toasted hazelnut and prune bread' in Hamelman's Bread. Hamelman's original recipe includes some dried yeast making it unsuitable for retarding overnight. The only changes I made were to add one tablespoon of fennel seeds and omit the yeast. I also extended to bulk fermentation to 2.5hrs and retarded the loaves overnight so that they would fit my schedule better.

Wonderfully tasty bread and makes very good toast. Next up this week, A whole wheat bread with toasted sesame seeds (recipe adapted from Tartine #3). The smell alone is irresistible.

The sesame seeds were toasted in advance in small batches. The sesame seeds pop like crazy and either refuse to toast much at all or spring all over the kitchen!

A slightly more detailed write up can be found here: http://jennybakesbread.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/sesame-wheat-and-prune-and-hazelnut.html. Happy Baking!