Red wine and walnut bread, because red wine makes everything better.

Adding red wine makes everything brilliant. Just one such example is drunken pasta (pasta cooked in red wine, I miss living in Italy ….).

Why not red wine walnut bread? Found a recipe for red wine and cranberry bread. In the uk finding cranberry is rare and expensive so instead I used walnuts (I also really like walnuts).

ingredients–

autolysis :

288 g  all-purpose flour

80 g water

123 g red wine

For bread dough:

102 g sourdough starter (at 100% hydration)

6.7 g Salt (1.5 tablespoon)

100 g toasted walnuts

Step 1 for the autolysis (it’s self-digestion, it refers to the destruction of a cell through the action of its own enzymes). Mix the flour, water and wine.

This is what wine, water and flour looks like, if you ever wondered. Delicious.

You should get this nice pasty pink goo. Leave it in the fridge for 12hours.

After 12 hours, let it warm up to room temperature (if not its just weird to mix), add the sourdough, salt and walnuts and mix. 4 sets of folds every 20 minutes and then let is proof and rest. A mix of onset winter kitchen coldness and I feel like this recipe takes longer proof. Might be the alcohol, slows everything down. I left it around 18 hours.

pink proofed bread!

In the oven at 230 Celcius –

The outside crust has this light bright colour but the real beauty is the inside. Wonderful mauve colour.

The bread tastes really lovely, it has the earthy warmth to it. The red wine in the bread does not make it taste like red wine. Instead it adds a subtlety and richness to the bread. Now where is my bleu cheese….