Home-baked spelt bread with walnuts

A sliced spelt bread with walnuts lies on a wooden board, next to it some walnuts and other baking utensils

L'Alfred's Organic dry yeast in 125g pack

normal

prep time 1 hour

total time 16 hours

Ingredients

Broth
100 g wholemeal spelt flour
200 g boiled water
Main dough
300 g spelt flour type 630
300 g wheat flour type 550
100 g natural yoghurt
250 ml room temperature water
15 g salt
2 g dry yeast
100 g chopped walnuts

Home-baked spelt bread with walnuts

Nothing tastes better in autumn than home-baked nut bread! This spelt bread with walnuts is ideal for cheese, sausage or savoury spreads. The chopped walnuts give the bread a nutty flavour and a little bite. Baked correctly, the walnut bread is moist and soft on the inside and pleasantly crispy on the outside.

The walnuts not only give the bread an autumnal flavour, but also give it a slightly darker colour. We leave the dough to rest for 10-12 hours so that the bread not only tastes good, but also has the right consistency. You can either prepare the dough the evening before if you want to bake early in the morning, or in the early morning of the baking day if you don’t want to bake until the evening.

Another tip for working with nuts: Dry nuts remove moisture from the dough. You can prevent this by soaking the nuts before adding them to the dough. However, you should then reduce the amount of liquid that you add directly to the dough. How much depends on the number of nuts in relation to the rest.

Instructions

For the stock:
- Bring the water to the boil
- Place the flour in a small heatproof bowl and pour the boiling water over it. Stir with a spoon until a homogeneous porridge is formed.
- Cover the bowl with cling film and leave the porridge to rest for 2.5 hours.
For the main dough:
- Pour room temperature water into a large bowl and add the scald, flour and dry yeast.
- Knead the ingredients evenly for a few minutes to form the dough.
- Add the salt and knead well until the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl.
- Then mix in the walnuts and knead well again so that they are distributed throughout the dough.
Place the dough in a bowl and cover with a damp cloth or a lid. The dough must now be left to rest for 10-12 hours at room temperature (approx. 22°C). During the first 1.5 hours, stretch and fold the dough every half hour so that it develops well.
After 10-12 hours of proofing, shape the dough into a ball and do not press it too firmly. The dough is no longer kneaded to prevent air pockets from escaping.
Leave the dough to rise for 90 minutes at room temperature in a floured proofing basket. The oven can be preheated approx. 15 minutes before the end of the piece proofing.

Bake it

Heat the oven to 250° C and directly heat a Dutch oven, a roasting tin or a bread baking tin.
Remove the baking tin from the oven and slide the dough directly into the hot tin.
Place the tin with the dough, covered with a lid, in the oven and bake at 250° for 10 minutes.
After 10 minutes, turn the oven down to 200°C and bake the dough, covered, for a further 25 minutes.
At the end, remove the lid and bake the bread again for 10-15 minutes without the lid. This gives the bread its beautiful colour and a crispy crust.
Once baked, remove the bread from the oven immediately and leave to cool thoroughly.

Tip: This is best done on a wire rack so that the base of the bread can breathe.