Walnut bread

So many walnuts, so little bread...

Tried this recipe. Halved it - four loaves seemed too much. And cut the raisins and replaced almonds with more walnuts.

(makes 2 medium loaves)

500 g plain flour

125 g fine wholewheat flour

125 g coarse wholewheat flour

3/4 tbsp dry yeast

1/2 tbsp olive oil

1/2 tbsp honey

1/2 tbsp salt

500 ml lukewarm water

1 1/2 cups walnuts, roughly chopped

Knead all ingredients except nuts together on a floured surface. Keep kneading until elastic - about 15 min. Shape into a rough square. Sprinkle nuts on top and roll up. Knead and twist to distribute the nuts. Make into a ball, put in a greased bowl, cover with a tea towel, and leave to rise for c. 3 hours in a warm place.

When risen, split in two and roll into flattened ovals. Put on a baking tray lined with paper, leaving space to allow doubling in size. Sprinkle the tops with plain flour and leave uncovered for 1 hour.

Heat the oven to 240C. Put the baking tray on the bottom rack and drop to 200C. Bake for 40 min, on bottom rack. Let cool before eating.

To freeze, wrap well. Thaw before unwrapping. Put in 180C oven for a few min.

I thought it was way too many nuts when I first added them, but it came out quite good. Bit dense maybe, but acceptable. s helped me with the kneading. I'm not great at making bread.

Cranberry oat coconut biscuits

These are probably my favourite biscuits at the moment. They remind me a bit of the 'National Trust' biscuits my mum used to make (the bicarb, and oats). And I love that the only sweetener (apart from the cranberries) is honey - I am always looking for good things to do with my jars on jars of honey... 

(makes about 12 small ones - double for a more normal number of biscuits is in brackets)

50 g wholemeal flour (100 g)

1 tsp cinnamon (optional) (2 tsp) 

45 g oats (90 g)

43 g desiccated coconut (86 g)

23 g sunflower seeds (46 g)

15 g dried cranberries (30 g)

56 g honey (112 g)

38 g melted butter (or coconut oil) (72 g)

1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda (1/2 tsp)

1 tbsp warm water (2 tbsp)

Heat oven to 180C. Line a baking sheet with paper. 

Mix flour, cinnamon if using, oats, coconut, cranberries and sunflower seeds in a large bowl. Melt butter and honey together in a small bowl in the microwave until just melted. Mix bicarb and water together in a cup and then add to the butter/honey mix. Add the butter/honey/bicarb mix to the flour mix, and mix well.

Put tbsp sized balls on the tray and flatten as much as you can without breaking (nb one time we squished the mix into dinosaur cutters to make dinosaur shapes and it worked OK). Bake 12-15 min until golden. Take out of the oven, let sit on the tray for c. 10 min, then remove to a wire rack and let cool.

The toasted oat / cranberry / sunflower seed / coconut mixture is delicious. Could easily be vegan (with coconut oil instead of butter). Raisins instead of cranberries and chopped walnuts instead of sunflower seeds could be good - or other such substitutions.