We've had a very wonderful year baking breads together.  It has been a year filled with learning about new breads, flour, and each other.    Little did we know that our exploration of all things bread would have so many of our readers wanting to join us in our monthly kitchen get-togethers.  Thus, the Bread Baking Buddies were born. The Buddies were folks who joined us by baking our monthly bread in the one and sometimes two week period after we revealed our bread.   We've had just as much fun getting to know them through their blogs as we have had getting to know each other.

When we started this group, we decided from the get-go that our group would be loose, rule free and, most importantly stay small, an even dozen kitchens getting together monthly over laughter, dough, coffee, wine and sometimes other spirits.   Over the past year we've lost two of our founding kitchens: Sher of the blog, What Did You Eat, who passed away unexpectedly in July, and Glenna of A Fridge Full of Food, who has left us to get back to a more casual way of approaching food blogging.  We miss both of them in our kitchens and they will always be Babes.

With the one year anniversary of the Bread Baking Babes we decided that it was time to get back to full strength and would like to welcome into the wrecking crew two long time Buddies,

Gretchen of CanelaYComino

Natashya of  LivingInTheKitchenWithPuppies

We are glad to be sharing our ovens with them and look forward to them playing host kitchen.   As always this year, anyone who wants to join us as Buddies is very welcome and we look forward to baking with you in the new year! 

As Kitchen of the Month, I am delighted to present you with

BBB Anniversary Bread

Carol Field’s

Pane ai Cinque Cereali con Noci

Five-Grain Bread with Walnuts

Adapted from

The Italian Baker by Carol Field

You can read my comments on this excellent book here.

The bread has rolled oats (flour), rye (flour), whole wheat (flour), brown rice (flour) and of course unbleached all-purpose flour.  Now technically I count that as only four grains in five flours but I don’t have any problem calling this bread a walnut delight.  In the introduction to this bread the author says this bread is all about the walnuts and I really have to agree.

Makes 2 9 X 5-inch loaves

(300 grams) walnut pieces

3 3/4 teaspoons active dry yeast

or

1 1/2 small cakes (27 grams) fresh yeast

¼ cup warm water

3 cups water, room temperature

3 3/4 cups (500 grams) unbleached all-purpose flour

1 ¼ cups (125 grams) oat flour or finely ground rolled oats

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (125 grams) rye flour

1 cup less 1 tablespoon (125 grams) whole-wheat flour

¾ cup (125 grams) brown rice flour

1 tablespoon salt

(original used an additional 1 teaspoon)

I baked the bread twice.  Following the recipe cut in half both times, once using the grains as written and then substituting chestnut flour for the rice flour.   The chestnut flour bread seemed slighly dryer than when I used the rice flour.  Since I tend to use the metric measures when they’re given, I used 150 grams of walnuts when mixing the half recipe both times without focusing on the cup measurement.  Then some of the other babes started talking about some of their bread not having a lot of walnut flavor.  As written the recipe calls for only 1 1/4 cup walnuts but when I measured a cup of walnuts I consistently got just over 100 grams.  300 grams then would be 3 cups.

Toast the walnuts at 350 to 400° F for 6 to 7 minutes.  Don’t let them burn but you should smell them toasting.  When cool, chop and set aside.

Mix all the flours, salt and yeast in a bowl and wisk together.

Mix about 2/3 of the dry ingredients with the 3 1/4 cups water (I used 1/2 potato water.)  Cover the dough and allow to rest 20 minutes.

Mix in the walnuts.  Knead in the remaining flour to get a firm, elastic and no longer sticky dough.  I used all the measured flour and a light extra dusting.  This took me about 8 minutes.

Place the dough in an oiled container and cover.  Allow to rise until doubled in volume - this took about an hour.

The dough can be baked in loaf pans.  I let my loaf to rise in an oval banneton.   It took about 50 minutes.

Bake at 400° 40 to 50 minutes.  My bread took 55 minutes to reach 205° internal.  It’s a fairly dense bread and is likely to take the full amount of time to be done.   Cool completely on a rack.                                                                                                                                                                              

A little cream cheese on the bread and hot chili and we had a delightful dinner.

With chestnut flour I baked the bread in a loaf pan.  I think the bread was drier than when baked with the rice flour.  The flavor and texture of this bread come from the walnuts not the flours.

I liked it best baked in the banneton.  It’s a walnut delight.

I reduced the amount of salt used by 1 teaspoon and used instant yeast.  

If you would like to join us baking this bread and be a Bread Baking Buddy, you need only to bake the bread, blog about it and send me a link to your post by Thursday 26 February.  If you would like the original directions for mixing the dough by hand, mixer and processor just drop me an email.   I’ll have the Buddy round up several days after the 26th.

Now I hope you run and check out all the other Babes to see what their experience was with this bread.