“The addition of toasted pine nuts and a few raisins gives this loaf its distinction, both in texture and in flavor.”
-James Beard, Beard on Bread
Since I have a well-documented dislike of raisins, I omitted them and just used pine nuts for this recipe. I am a big fan of Mike’s belief that if the ingredient isn’t in the title of the recipe, you can leave it out. This works better in some instances than others (for example, I don’t think you can skip the yeast even if it isn’t in the title).
Ingredients:
I started by mixing the dough together, leaving out the pine nuts for the time being. This dough was a joy to work with: soft, pliable, and easy to knead. Since I didn’t want to repeat my mistakes from Maryetta’s Oatmeal Bread, I was patient and gave the dough about two hours for its first rising. The recipe specifies that the pine nuts be “toasted for 3 minutes”, so I cooked them in a warm skillet over medium-high heat for 3 minutes before kneading them into the risen dough. Next, I shaped my dough into two loaves. Beard’s recipe calls for 9 x 5 pans, but based on my loaf size I used 8 x 4 pans. This turned out to be the right call–after one and half hours, my dough had risen filled out the pans.
I baked the loaves at 425 degrees for 10 minutes, and then reduced the heat and baked them at 350 degrees for an additional 20 minutes.
Whole-Wheat Nut Bread is an amazingly light, fluffy bread with the occasional crunch of a toasted pine nut. As far as flavor, although it is included in the “Sweetened Breads” section, I would not characterize it as such. My strongest impression was of the salty, smokey flavor of the toasted pine nuts. Overall, this was a nicely textured whole-wheat bread with a bit of a twist (and I didn’t miss the raisins one bit!)
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