|
My recipe
Walnut and raisin bread
Introduction
I was always in love with "cuisine francaise", from the very simple dishes like onion soup to the most refined and exquisite recipes of haute cuisine.
The recipe for this bread was born as a tribute of my love to sucre-sale. I love to combine French cheeses, pate, foie gras with something sweet. When I lived in France, it was easy to buy this type of bread to go well with cheese or foie gras, but here, in Spain, it is a challenge to find the one, which would accommodate my taste. So, I started experimenting, and it tool took me quite a while to come up with the perfect recipe, which I'm happy to share with you.
- 500 ml AP flour (10,5% protein)
- 130-160 ml sparkling water
- 2 tbsp walnut or any other vegetable oil (melted butter)
- 50 ml raisin (dried apricots, figs, cranberries)
- 50-70 ml rosemary honey (any liquid honey, molasses)
- 15 g fresh yeast
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 70 ml walnut oil
- 1,5 tbsp unsweetened cocoa
- 3 tbsp rum (brandy, any other liquor)<(
- Combine raisin with 50 ml of rum and leave to soak
- Toast the walnuts on a dry pan, chop roughly
- Sieve together flour and cocoa
- Take the raisin out and coat them with flour
- Add rest of the water and honey to the yeast mixture and stir well
- Make a dough gradually adding the flour to the yeast mixture. Add salt and oil at the end
- Knead the dough for 10 min, transfer to a bowl, cover with cling film and leave in warm place to rise for 1 hour
- Add raisin and nuts into the risen dough, knead a bit more, form a loaf, dust with flour and leave to rise again for 20 min
- Preheat the oven to 240C together with the baking tray
- Use a sharp knife to make diagonal slashes across the top of the loaf
- Spray the oven with cold water, place the loaf onto the hot tray
- Bake at 230C for 5 min, then spray the oven again, reduce the temperature to 200C and bake for 25 min (until ready)
- Leave the bread to cool on a wired rack
Thoughts and Ideas
A short disclaimer first - posting a recipe I write my and OLNY MY opinion about it, which could not be taken as an absolute. All the reasoning, I provide, are based on my own tastes.
Now back to the recipe. This bread should not have firm crumb, which you would expect from ciabatta or other “Italian” type breads, quite the contrary. That's why I'm using here AP flour with 10% protein only. I use Vichy sparkling water. Also I used the bread maker for kneading and rising of the dough.
Now a few words about nuts and dried fruits. You can take any dried fruit of your choice: black currants, cranberries, figs, apricots, prunes. It really depends on what you are going to serve your bread with. I love apricots bread to go with foie gras, bread with figs are good with parma ham, raisin in your bread will marry perfectly with cheeses. The only thing I don't change are nuts. I tried with almonds and hazelnuts, its good, but not ideal balance. Again, its only my personal opinion. The dark molasses, brown sugar or maple syrup could be used instead of honey. For a better crust I would recommend to leave the bread in the switched off oven on the wired rack for 20 min with the oven door ajar.
|
|
