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Walnut Bread

Walnut Bread is equally good with cheese or toasted and slathered with butter and honey. Walnut pieces give the loaf a satisfying crunch, while a few ground ones distribute the flavour throughout. You'll need some recently fed, lively sourdough starter for this recipe.

Course Bread
Cuisine British, European
Keyword bread, walnut bread
Servings 1 large loaf

Ingredients

For the walnut paste

  • 50 g walnuts ground
  • 50 g water
  • 2 tbp honey
  • 20 g butter melted
  • salt pinch

For the dough

  • 350 g white bread flour
  • 100 g rye flour
  • 50 g wholemeal flour
  • 1.5 tsp salt
  • two thirds tsp dried yeast
  • 120 g walnuts broken or halved
  • 100 g sourdough starter
  • 220 g water

Instructions

THE DAY BEFORE YOU WANT TO BAKE THE BREAD

For the walnut paste

  1. In a bowl, mix all the ingredients together to form a paste. Set aside.

For the dough

  1. Put the flours, salt, dried yeast and walnuts in a large bowl then set aside.

  2. Whisk the sourdough starter into the water then stir in all the walnut paste.

  3. Pour all the water/starter/walnut paste liquid into the large bowl containing the flour mixture.

  4. Use a rubber spoon or spatula to bring the mixture together into a rough, wet dough.

  5. Cover the bowl and leave overnight or 12-14 hours.

ON THE DAY OF BAKING

  1. Scrape the dough out of its bowl onto a well-floured worktop. Flatten out then fold the dough into thirds a few times before moulding it into your desired shape of loaf. Leave to rest for a few minutes, covered, while you prepare a proving basket/banneton or bowl (see next step)
  2. Prepare a basket or banneton by dusting well with flour. If using a bowl, line with a clean tea-towel and dust that well with flour.
  3. Place the dough in the prepared banneton or bowl and cover. Leave to prove for 30 minutes. Pre-heat your oven to 250C or its highest setting, with a heavy, lidded pot inside to heat up also.
  4. After 30 minutes, reduce oven temperature to 220C, remove the pot from the oven, take off the lid and carefully flip the dough from the proving vessel into the pot.
  5. Slash the top of the dough, replace the lid and put the pot back in the oven. Leave to bake for 30 minutes without removing the lid.

  6. After 30 minutes, reduce the heat to 200C. Remove the pot from the oven, take the bread out of it and put the bread back in, directly onto the oven shelf. Bake for a further 15-20 minutes until the bread is cooked through. If necessary, reduce the oven temperature to stop the crust over browning before the loaf is finished baking.

  7. When the loaf sounds hollow if tapped underneath, it should be cooked. Place on a wire rack to cool.

Recipe Notes

Recipe adapted from Dan Lepard's highly recommended book, The Handmade Loaf.