Like most well-intended new year resolutions, my 2011 plan to bake bread twice a month fell through some time in early spring. At the beginning of the year, I had grand vision of cultivating my own sourdough starter to conclude a year-long learning with the most handsome boule of walnut sourdough. With the arrival of warmer temperature, my weekends became increasingly busy traveling out of town to inline skating races. Needless to say, bread baking dropped from my priorities and the sourdough starter never even came to be.
I still dream of the day when I can proudly call myself a proficient baker. Until then, I am armed with plenty of recipes to help me fake-it-til-I-make-it. One such recipe is Dan Lepard’s Simple Walnut Loaf. He originally published the recipe in The Guardian way back in 2005. The recipe has been revised for his cookbook Short & Sweet but the theme remains the same. This is a tender loaf with crispy crust and big walnut flavour. Oh, and dead simple technique that any beginner bakers can follow. Lepard called this a bread that would win you applause instead of awards. I cannot agree more.
To make the Simple Walnut Loaf, you don’t even need a mixer nor a particularly strong pair of arms. What is most interesting is a slurry made of red wine, water, pureed walnuts, olive oil, and honey. I think this is the first time I see recipe calling for pureed nuts in bread dough. The wine and walnuts gave the crumb its characteristic purplish tint which I absolutely adore. The shaggy ball of dough gets a light knead and short rest a couple of times before fermentation.
This is where things veered from the script for me. You see, the ambient temperature of my house is a comfortable 20C/70F. Comfortable for me, not so much for the yeast in my bread dough. And it certainly didn’t help that I forgot to warm the red wine and water before mixing with the dry ingredients. My dough was worse than sluggish. For all intents and purposes, it seemed lifeless. Rather than the prescribed 45 minutes of initial fermentation, mine took well over 6 hours despite my intervention to move it from counter top to fireplace mantel. I reluctantly shaped the dough into an oval. Proofing the dough took another two hours.
All that waiting was not necessarily a bad thing. Sure I had to stay up way past my bedtime but dough develops better flavour with a slower, gentler fermentation. My bread indeed tasted more complex than its simple technique would suggest. I happily ate slice after naked slice right from the cutting board. Butter? Who needs butter?
With the walnut loaf, my love for bread baking is renewed. My house may be cold but the promise of homemade bread is far too enticing. Who knows, perhaps a sourdough will be in my future.
