Lingonberry And Hazelnut Bread

The inspiration behind this comes from TheFreshLoaf blog. Generally I look at the photos only, but ever so often there are interesting posts as well. One was on bread with blueberries and whole hazelnuts.



Not really season for blueberries at the moment, but I have some lingonberry jam that I'm trying to use up. Lundulph wasn't taken with it and the jar is just too big for me to tackle on my own, though I am doing my best.

So this week's batch was to be wholemeal and have lingonberry jam and hazelnuts in it. Since I started my sourdough Monty, I've been improvising heavily, although generally using the same ingredients every time, but varying the amounts. However, I thought I'd write these down.

Ingredients
350 g white flour starter (100% hydration)
350 g strong white flour
150 g strong wholemeal flour
300 g water
12 g salt
150 g sweet lingonberry jam
100 whole roasted hazelnuts

Method

1. Feed the starter a few hours in advance, so that it's at its peak when baking. Monty takes about 5 h.


2. Add the starter, flours and water into the bread mixer and run for 10 minutes to get a nice dough. Or make by hand of course.


3. Towards the end of the kneading, add the salt, then the lingonberry jam and incorporate well.


4. Finally add the hazelnuts and mix just enough to get them evenly spread out in the dough. Then shape the dough into a ball and leave to rest for 2 h.


5. Butter two loaf tins ("pound loaf" size).


6. On a generously floured surface shape the dough into a long sausage, then divide in two and place in the loaf tins, cover with cling film and place in a cool place to proof overnight or a warm place to proof in 4 - 5 hours.


7. Pre-heat the oven to 225 degrees C, then slash the loaves and bake in the middle of the oven for 45 minutes. If the crust goes dark, cover with aluminium foil and turn the heat down a bit.


8. Remove from the loaf tins and let cool on a wire rack.

Lundulph had three slices for breakfast this morning and said it was very nice, though he couldn't notice the lingonberry, only the hazelnuts and mostly because they were whole. This is what I expected, the jam sweetens the bread a bit, so won't perhaps work in a ham sandwich, but mostly it makes it moist. The crumb feels almost a bit sticky.

I haven't had breakfast yet because I'm still full of ravioli from last night.

And yes, I still need to practice on my slashing. I actually went and bought razor blades, in the hopes that they'd work better than the knife I've been using so far, but no. I even tried to wet it, but water doesn't really stick to metal. I'll try dusting flour on the loaves first before slashing.

One thing about improvising with amounts is that I've always ended up with a very wet dough. When I first mixed up the ingredients for this batch, it seemed to turn out rather stiffer than normal, which I thought was good, but two-thirds into the kneading, the dough went just as wet as on previous occasions. But a wet dough gives a nice light shaggy bread and I don't want to lose that.