Walnut Raisin Sourdough Bread from SFBI Artisan II
Most of the breads we baked in the Artisan II workshop at the San Francisco Baking Institute (SFBI) are found in Michel Suas' “Advanced Bread & Pastry” (AB&P) textbook. A couple of the breads I and the other students enjoyed the most are not, and one of them was a delicious Walnut Raisin bread made with a firm levain and a small amount of instant yeast.
The following is my scaled down version which made two loaves of 563 gms each. (The 26 g by which the dough exceeded the ingredient weights must be due to water absorbed by the raisins.) I incorporated an autolyse in the procedure which we did not use at the SFBI.
|
Total Formula |
|
|
|
Ingredients |
Baker's % |
Wt (g) |
|
KAF AP flour |
71.57 |
383 |
|
KAF Whole Wheat flour |
19.77 |
106 |
|
BRM Dark Rye flour |
8.66 |
46 |
|
Water |
67.62 |
362 |
|
Walnuts (toasted) |
15.81 |
85 |
|
Raisins (soaked) |
19.77 |
106 |
|
Salt |
2.13 |
11 |
|
Total |
206.41 |
1100 |
|
Levain |
|
|
|
Ingredients |
Baker's % |
Wt (g) |
|
KAF AP flour |
95 |
77 |
|
BRM Dark Rye flour |
5 |
4 |
|
Water |
50 |
40 |
|
Stiff Starter |
60 |
48 |
|
Total |
210 |
169 |
-
Mix all ingredients until well incorporated.
-
Ferment 12 hrs at room temperature.
|
Final Dough |
|
|
|
Ingredients |
Baker's % |
Wt (g) |
|
KAF AP flour |
65 |
275 |
|
KAF Whole Wheat flour |
25 |
106 |
|
BRM Dark Rye flour |
10 |
42 |
|
Water |
72 |
305 |
|
Yeast (dry instant) |
0.1 |
0.4 |
|
Walnuts (toasted) |
25 |
85 |
|
Raisins (soaked) |
20 |
106 |
|
Salt |
2.7 |
11 |
|
Levain |
40 |
169 |
|
Total |
259.8 |
1100 |
Procedure
-
Mix the flours and the water to a shaggy mass. Cover tightly and autolyse for 20-60 minutes.
-
Toast the walnuts, broken into large pieces, for 15 minutes at 325ºF. (Can be done ahead of time)
-
Soak the raisins in cold water. (Can be done ahead of time)
-
Add the salt and the levain and mix at Speed 1 until well incorporated (about 2 minutes).
-
Mix at Speed 2 to moderate gluten development (about 8 minutes).
-
Add the nuts and raisins (well-drained) and mix at Speed 1 until they are well-distributed in the dough.
-
Transfer to a lightly floured board and knead/fold a few times if necessary to better distribute the nuts and raisins.
-
Round up the dough and transfer to a lightly oiled bowl. Cover tightly.
-
Ferment for 2 hours at 80ºF.
-
Divide the dough into two equal pieces. Pre-shape as boules. Let the pieces relax for 20-30 minutes, covered.
-
Shape as bâtards or boules and place, seam side up. In bannetons or en couche. Cover well.
-
Proof for 1.5 to 2 hours.
-
An hour before baking, pre-heat oven to 500ºF with baking stone and steaming apparatus in place.
-
Transfer the loaves to a peel. Score them. Transfer to the baking stone.
-
Turn the oven down to 450ºF and bake for 15 minutes with steam, then another 15 minutes in a dry oven. (Boules may take a few more minutes to bake than bâtards.)
-
When the loaves are done, turn off the oven but leave the loaves on the baking stone with the oven door ajar for another 8-10 minutes.
-
Transfer the loaves to a cooling rack.
-
Cool completely before slicing.
Notes
Because of the water in the soaked raisins, The dough was wetter than expected from the 67% hydration given for the total dough. It felt more like a 70-72% hydration dough.
The crust was thinner and got soft faster with this bake than that done in the deck oven at SFBI. I might try baking at 460ºF and also leaving the loaves in the turned off oven for longer. Perhaps a shorter period baking with steam would help get the crunchier crust I would like with this bread.
This bread has a delicious flavor which is exceptionally well-balance between the grains, nuts and raisins. There is a very mild sourdough tang. Definitely a bread I'll be baking frequently.
David
Submitted to YeastSpotting
Comments
I was hoping this recipe was going to be posted David! Thank you so much for sharing. The loaves look great, and once I am settled in my new apartment next week I will be giving this a shot.
Thanks again!
Beautiful, David!
Thanks for sharing your experiences and interpretation of the SFBI recipe. A NICE Christmas present! I will try it before New Year!
Feliz Navidad!
Jay
Bookmarked and in the que for New Year's Eve.
Did I mention I really enjoyed this bread from your school work?
I plan to bake it Tuesday or Wednesday.
Those are some beautiful batards, dude.
Glenn
Yes. I do recall that you found this bread acceptable.
David
This seems to be the new expression, I've been hearing everywhere, lately! Delicous looking with the nuts and raisins..grains, nuts and fruit, a favorite of mine and do make for a great combo of flavors. Thank you for sharing the formula!
Happy Holidays!
Sylvia
Brilliant ! Made me smile but then your posts usually do and I always learn something.
May I ask what have you done with all the breads from your classes ? I am always curious as to what folks do with the abundant out- put from a week of baking at SFBI. Just curious.
Have a wonderful New Year. I don't have an oven at present...x1 week so far...hopefully they will get it fixed on Tuesday. Just in time for us to head to Lexington VA to our chef son's home. We get to eat at his new restaurant...The Red Hen. Wonderful food on the menu so I am excited. c
Re. disposition of SFBI breads: Breads that are left at SFBI are delivered to charities that feed the hungry.
The ones I took to my hotel got eaten or frozen to take back home. A lot of bread was foisted off on my baby brother.
The breads that got back to Fresno are either in the freezer, have been given to co-workers, friends and neighbors or have already been consumed.
Oh. I forgot the loaves I gave to the desk clerk in our hotel.
Enjoy your time with your son. I hope the storm headed his way has passed before you have to fly in.
David
If any of you do bake this bread, please let us know how it turns out for you.
Happy holidays and happy baking!
David
Hubby prefers a bread which welcomes mustard and deli meats. The pictures of your breads are superb, David !
anna
We also made an olive bread at SFBI which was delicious. It made wonderful garlic bread, by the way.
David
Outstanding post David. Thank you for sharing the personal details that made this beautiful bread.
Eric
Thank you for sharing your recipe and detail instructions, David. I bookmarked it for the future bread making. The list is getting very long. Sigh!
One question, please: What is a "BRM dark rye"?
Thank you.
mantana
BRM Dark Rye stands for 'Bob's Red Mill' Dark Rye. At least, I believe that is what David is implying.
"BRM" = Bob's Red Mill.
If that brand is not available, you could use another dark rye (whole grain, finely milled rye). It would work with Medium Rye too I'm sure.
David
David, Your bread looks lovely, and thanks for sharing this formula!
Regards, breadsong
Hi David,
I love the colour of this bread.
I calculate the grist you used to be roughly 50% wholegrain flour.
It brings great colour, and flavour no doubt, yet your proof levels are perfect
Best wishes
Andy
The formula has a little less than 30% whole grains.
The flavor is very nice, and the bread has good keeping quality.
I may make this bread with other combinations of dried fruit and nuts - dried cherries or currents, hazelnuts or pecans.
David
Hi David,
Is the levain built with Wholewheat Flour as you list, or is it built with AP as you suggest from your Total Formula?
If the leaven is built with wholewheat, the proportion is nearly 43%. But maybe the wholewheat specified in the levain is just a typo?
Best wishes
Andy
Thanks for catching this, Andy. The levain has 95% white flour and 5% rye. I've corrected my post.
David
Hi David,
I was scaling this formula and wonder about a couple of values in the Total Formula. I get 352 for the KA AP, and 345 for the water. Am I missing something?
Bob
David,
Bringing back an old post but this is the loaf that you referred me to recently and today was the day I finally got around to baking it.
By all standards my bake of your formula would have been considered a 'failure' on my part....The resulting loaves (2- 650g boules and 9 - 90g rolls) were dense and took forever to proof and to bake resulting in very dark bottoms and a thick crust. Very rustic looking indeed.
The rolls were dense too but, due to being smaller, they proofed on schedule and baked in about 20 minutes with perfect crust - both upper and lower.
I expected my daughter (my chief bread critic) to hate them. She totally surprised me by LOVING them! Ordinarily she prefers cranberries in breads but I refrained from baking to her specific tastes and she found that she actually preferred the raisins.....not surprising to me....tastes do change and when certain ingredients are matched with other ingredients something new emerges....I am hoping she is understanding this phenomenon someday.......
Anyway....It was nice to know that once again something I would consider a flop has not been to those eating it. It will be hard to restrain myself from trying to tweak it so that it does come out less dense in a future bake just to see what happens...
Density was due to several reasons that I was suspect of while mixing this loaf but I chose to proceed as planned to see what would happen.....Reasons included that I miscalculated the water adjustment for 100% whole grains AND I increased the raisins without soaking them prior to adding them to the loaf. The poor yeast just couldn't compete with the raisins for the available water so by morning the dough was too dry....
Anyway - Thanks for pointing this loaf out to me. I never would have found it on my own as I have a hard enough time keeping up with baking the loaves that are currently being blogged about...leaves little time to search in the 'archives'. :-)
Take Care,
Janet
I would agree that the raisins were the cause of your dry bread. I'm glad your daughter liked it. The flavor combination is very nice.
Do try it as in the OP. It's a good bread.
David
David,
Daughter requested that I bake this again as rolls so she can take them to her Sunday morning ballet class in a couple of weeks. I plan on adjusting the water and am hoping that she won't have a fit due to change in texture though the flavor will be the same and I really don't think she will notice it all that much. It was in the loaves that the difference was more dramatic....I am curious to see the difference.
.....but she could notice the change - she has in the past and then when I try to replicate my mistake I can't. :-(
I did take good notes on this loaf so I know I can repeat it if the 'improved' version isn't to her liking. She loves dense loaves loaded with fruit, seeds and/or nuts to eat with a slice of cheese or two - or simply to have as a stand alone meal that will keep her full for hours at a time. People I give my breads to love these dense types of loaves too so I am not as concerned as I used to be when a loaf turns out as this one did today. Plenty of takers around here. :-)
I will let you know how it turns out.
Thanks again for the recipe.
Take Care,
Janet
Wonderful bread, David! Probably pretty decent with cheeses, I can imagine? Have you compared the walnut-raisin sourdough with Hamelman's versions, by the way? Do you recall which formulas from AB&P you baked during Artisan II? Any particular favourites from that book?
I don't recall that I have made Hamelman's raisin-walnut sourdough.
In Artisan II, we baked the WW SD, Semolina Bread, Multi-grain Sourdough, Pane Francese, Ciabatta, Challah as well as several pains au levain that are in AP &P. The Walnut-Raisin SD is not in the book. And the miche we baked, which was my favorite, is a very different version than the one in AB&P. We also baked an Olive bread that was outstanding. I think it's in the book, but I haven't compared the formulas.
My least favorite was the Sourdough WW. The multi-grain SD was very good, but I prefer Hamelman's version.
Of the breads we baked that are in AB&P, I think my favorites were the olive bread and the multi-grain SD and the Pain au Levain with a liquid starter fed twice a day. However, the breads I liked best overall were the miche and the walnut-raisin SD, neither of which are in the book. I have blogged on both of these breads, and the formulas are available on TFL. The formula for the miche is here: This miche is a hit!
David
Hi David,
Long time gone from TFL but back again. I want to bake the walnut raisin sourdough in cloches. Since this formula has all that added sugar, what would the appropriate baking time and oven temp be? I'm afraid my go-to sourdough (Hamelman's s'dough with mixed starters--white and rye) for which I preheat the cloche lids at 500 dF, then reduce the temp to 460 dF when the bread goes in (proofed on parchment in the cloche bottoms), baked 20 min. with lids on, then 15-20 min. with lids off, would be way too high and probably burn the crust. Any suggestions? I saw Glen's post using pecans and cranberries, which would be similar. (I was thinking of using dried tart cherries instead of raisins.)
Thanks! Joy(ful) D.
How nice to find you back on TFL!
Where is the "added sugar" to which you referred? Do you mean the raisins? I have baked breads with raisins, currents, sour cherries and figs. Uhhhh ... only one at a time, of course. The ones on the surface of the loaves do char. If they are visible before the bake, you can try to push them in or pull them out, I suppose.
I do not change my baking temperature or time because there are nuts or dried fruit in the dough.
I hope this speaks to your concern. If not, please clarify.
David
Thank you, David, for your reassurance. Yes, I thought the dried fruit would add sugar. I haven't baked with fruit or nuts in a "bread bread" before, just tea breads. It feels like "old home week" back on TFL. If the bread comes out well (don't know why it shouldn't), I'll post a followup. Best regards, Joy
When I made this bread, I was delighted with the quality of the bread itself, always important. Walnuts, raisins and cranberries are tasty nuggests of flavor on their own. The flavor, crumb and crust of the bread were wonderful as well, and making them in my cloches worked just fine. I used to be able to post pics, but can't seem to get the hang of it with my relatively new computer.
Thanks, David and Glenn, for the formula! I will make this again! Oh yes, I also noted the 31-gm gap when comparing the total formula weight of AP flour with the combined totals of the levain and the final dough. So I added the 31 gm and a couple TBS of water, and checked for dough consistency; it worked out fine.
Joy
I'm happy you liked the bread. I should make it again myself! Maybe with figs and walnuts.
David
I'm a novice baker, and would like to try this recipe. I have a scheduling issue, and am not sure how to work out the timing of the steps: I work out of the house for 11 hrs/day, 6 or 7 days/week - leaving about 1 hour in the morning and 4 hours at night that for baking. Can you make any suggestions for fitting the steps of the recipe into that schedule?
Hey David, I made the Walnut Raisin Sourdough last week and it tasted great but did not rise in the oven. I know it did not have enough out structure even tho I used the windowpane test and the gluten seemed to be right but alas the bread was not. I added more water and maybe that spoiled my dough as the structure was tight at one time, too tight I thought. I knew not to throw it out and when baked and even flat the taste was what I was wanting so it is almost gone after only a few days. I looked over the formula and see that the final mix AP flour 275 g. plus the AP flour 77 g. in levain did not add up to the total AP 383. Should I increase AP flour and water to get to 383 AP and change the formula or is the total an error and should I go with the grams in the final build plus levain and disregard the 383 grams in the total loaf?
I am anxious to try more of your formulas and look forward to all the blogs on your website. Thank you, Laurie
Hi, Laurie.
There are lots of reasons a loaf might not have good oven spring. Problems with gluten development are just one of them. From your comments, I wonder if your dough was under-fermented. I can't tell the point at which you felt the dough was "too tight" or what you mean by that. I wonder if you added too much water, got a really slack dough and had trouble shaping the loaves. How did you proof them?
This type of bread generally does not have big holes, but it should be well aerated and full of small holes. When you add lots of solids and lots of whole grain flour, the crumb will be less open.
Re. the amount of AP flour. I'm guessing that what you missed was the flour in the stiff starter that fed the levain. The starter contained 31g of AP flour. The numbers in the OP are correct (rounded to the nearest gram).
David