Maple Walnut Tart

This Maple Walnut Tart is a delicious twist and change of pace from the usual holiday pecan pie. 

The tart, with the combination of the toasted walnuts and pure maple syrup, just might become your new favorite holiday dessert. 

Nazook | A Walnut Filled Armenian Pastry

Nazook is a buttery and slightly sweet pastry rolled around a walnut, flour, and butter filling that has been flavored with vanilla and cardamom. 

This month, the Bread Baking Babes are making Nazook. Nazook you ask? It's a pastry made with flour, lots of butter, and lots of sour cream, and then filled with a buttery walnut, cardamom, and vanilla filling. Butter. Yes. There is a lot of butter in these. Is this a problem?

Trail Mix Cookies

These Trail Mix Cookies are loaded with nuts, seeds, dried fruit, whole grains, and dark chocolate, which makes it easy to justify having them for breakfast, or anytime of the day.

These trail mix cookies are loaded with lots of delicious and nutritious ingredients, including dried cherries, toasted sunflower seeds, and toasted walnuts. Just like trail mix, there are just enough chocolate chips to make you want to keep having more.

Walnut Levain Bread

This Walnut Levain Bread is such a pleasure to make, and even more fun to eat. The crust is chewy, and the crumb is soft and airy, plus it's loaded with toasted walnuts.

This Walnut Levain Bread makes the absolute best toast. I also love it broiled with melty cheese or spread with goat cheese and fig jam.

Sourdough Date Nut Cranberry Muffins

These Sourdough Date Nut Cranberry Muffins combine the tang of sourdough with the sweetness of dates. Then there are the tart cranberries adding an additional flavor dimension. So good.

I keep a sourdough starter in my refrigerator, which I feed regularly to keep it alive and ready to leaven bread. I've had this starter for at least seven years. That means there have been a lot of "feedings."

Fig and Walnut Bread

This fig and walnut bread is so delicious toasted and buttered for breakfast. It also makes incredible grilled cheese sandwiches. 

This bread is loaded with chopped dried mission figlets and ground toasted walnuts.

This bread was kind of an experiment to see how ground nuts would affect the texture of my four hour country loaf. I am really happy with the results!

Bacon and Roquefort Cheese Muffins with Toasted Walnuts

These Bacon and Roquefort Cheese Muffins with Toasted Walnuts are such a savory and rich treat. They are a wonderful addition to a breakfast or brunch bread basket. Just imagine them with steak and eggs.

Pain aux Noix - Auberge Walnut Bread

This Pain aux Noix, loaded with toasted chopped walnuts, is incredibly delicious. What I mean is, it is jump-up-and-down, I-can't-believe-how-tasty-this-is, delicious. The bread is wonderful spread with butter or a soft cheese such as brie. Try topping the cheese with a bit of prosciutto or even a little honey. So good. The bread stays nice and fresh for a couple of days, perhaps from the ground walnuts in the dough. It also makes amazing toast.

Cranberry, Walnut, and Pecan Rye Bread

This cranberry, walnut, and pecan rye bread will make your house smell amazing while it is baking. It's the combination of the the toasted walnuts and pecans, plus, naturally, the smell of baking bread.

It's delicious with goat cheese or Boursin and, of course, it's wonderful just toasted and buttered.

Whole Wheat Sourdough with Toasted Walnuts and Cracked Wheat

This is the perfect bread to serve with flavorful cheeses and pâtés, along with fall fruits, such as apples, pears, and grapes. It is great thinly sliced and toasted. The crust is nice and crunchy, and the crumb has a wonderful toasted walnut flavor. 

Sourdough Bread with Walnuts & Raisins

This is great bread. I'm just saying. And, yay, I had all of the ingredients!

I was a little worried about the medium rye for a while. I have a written inventory of all of the different flours I've got in the house. Pretty organized, right? Except I couldn't find the book in which I wrote the inventory....

I found the dark rye, the white rye, the pumpernickel. Where is the medium rye? (first world problems!). I was getting ready to combine some dark and white rye (although I'm pretty sure that's not exactly a substitute, I'm not a rye expert) but then, eureka, I found it at the bottom of the garage refrigerator, a refrigerator that was purchased specifically to support my ingredient habit. If I had more room in my garage, I'm not ashamed to say that I would add a freezer.  Fortunately, reason prevails. So far. We still use the garage for the purpose for which it was intended. Cars. Imagine that.

There was also some additional drama. As I dumped the loaves out of the bannetons onto the baking stone, my oven began to go a little bit crazy. It suddenly insisted on baking on "convection roast" at the wrong temperature. I got it to bake (actually convection roast) at the correct temperature, but every time I opened the oven door, it would revert to 375 degrees F. I was going to spray the oven interior to add additional steam, but I was so freaked by the turn of events, that I skipped that. I did, however, fill a steam pan with boiling water.

A baker with a wacko oven? This is just not going to work. I definitely regret having just one oven (first world problems again).

Fortunately, the loaves came out beautifully. They baked a lot faster that the recipe described. Thank goodness for the instant read thermometer. The bread was getting really brown so I decided to take its temperature. This bread was ready way before it was supposed to be. The bread actually took about 15 minutes less time to finish baking.

Interesting. While I'm not happy with the turn of events, I might actually experiment with the convection bake and roast modes once we get this beast repaired.  Now, how will we get a technician out to the house to get this thing fixed in time for some baking projects I have urgently planned (more first world problems)?

This bread is "mixed method," which means it involves both natural yeast and commercial yeast. It takes two days to make. On the first day, I made the levain, which is made from a sourdough starter. On the second day, I mixed the levain into the rest of the ingredients. If your sourdough starter has not been fed for quite a while, feed it the day before you make the levain.

Sourdough Bread with Walnuts and Raisins

Ingredients

Levain

82 grams unbleached all purpose flour

41 grams water

66 grams sourdough starter

Dough

308 grams unbleached bread flour

119 grams whole wheat flour

47 grams medium rye flour

3/4 tsp instant yeast

13 grams salt

All of the levain

341 grams water

95 grams coarsely chopped walnuts

95 grams raisins

Instructions

To make the levain:

Add the ingredients to a one or two quart bowl and mix until incorporated. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and ferment at room temperature for 8 hours or overnight. 

To make the bread:

In the bowl of a stand mixer, whisk all of the dry ingredients except the raisins and walnuts. Add the levain and the water. Mix in the levain and the water with a large spoon or dough whisk. Mix with the dough hook on low or "stir" for one minute. Increase the speed to the next level and mix for 15 minutes. Lower the mixer speed to the lowest level and add in the walnuts and raisins. Mix for one minute, remove the dough, and knead by hand until fully incorporated. 

Place the dough into an oiled container and allow to rise for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, until almost doubled. 

Gently deflate the dough and divide into two even pieces. Shape into boules.

Allow to ferment for about 60 to 90 minutes, until doubled. 

Bake the loaves in a 450 degree oven on a baking stone with a steam pan for 40 to 50 minutes. 

Or maybe convection roast for 30 minutes?  

This recipe is the January bread of the month (the BOM) for the Facebook Artisan Bread Baker's group is Sourdough Bread with Walnut and Raisins. Darlene posted a photo of her bread and I asked her if she was willing to share the recipe with the group for the BOM. Thank you Darlene for a wonderful contribution.