A blog about food and sourdoughbread
This recipe for sourdough walnut bread has been updated and rewritten. For those who prefer to follow the old recipe, there is a link in the recipe notes.
As I write this, the snow falls outside the window.
Winter is here, just like it was two years ago when I first published this recipe about sourdough walnut bread.
I remember that I complained that my starter was grumpy.
It tends to be that at this time of the year.
It’s too cold, and the air is too dry.
I found a recipe for a bread called Pane Valle Maggia. According to the author, it comes from Lugano in the southern part of Switzerland, and it’s a bread with a lot of taste that goes well with charcuterie like salami and dry-cured ham.
That’s my type of bread, I said to myself.
Besides, It looked quite easy to do.
The original recipe called for both sourdough starter and commercial yeast, but I wanted to try with sourdough starter only.
But then I made some calculations and realized that the hydration was about 80%, and I understood that it wouldn’t be that easy.
At the end of the 1900 century, it was grown four times more rye than wheat here in Sweden.
Rye is a more durable grain, which was crucial at the time. If the harvest was poor, it could mean starvation and, by extension, death.
You simply did not take any unnecessary risks.