Enjoy a slice of this sourdough bread with our homemade Maple Peanut Butter or Honey Cinnamon Cashew Butter. A match made in heaven!
If you’ve been on a similar sourdough journey for the last year, you are no doubt ready to move past the basic plain bread into the area of experimentation. The first experiment for me was to explore sourdough pizza, which my kids loved! Sourdough bread with its tangy taste and and incredibly delicious crust is also just a blank canvas begging to be played with. Let’s take a basic sourdough and turn it into an artisanal bread we usually only admire on the shelves of professional bakeries. My way of doing so is studding the airy interior of the loaf with walnuts and raisins. A very easy yet a delicious variation on the classic, which is delicious with sweet or savoury toppings!
The Recipe and Method
If you’ve mastered the basics of the sourdough, you will be very happy to know that this bread is really no different. For those of you coming here with no prior knowledge, I suggest reading my in depth article Sourdough Bread for Beginners. There you can learn everything you need to know from how to build a sourdough starter to the purpose of stretch and folds. You can also watch a short video on how to shape a simple boule ( a round loaf). Essentially all you will need for the walnut and raisin bread is a good quality bread flour, water, salt, walnuts and raisins. I am assuming you’ve got your starter at the ready!
Although not necessary, I like to feed my starter with whole wheat flour and use all white flour for the rest of the loaf. I like a little bit of texture and fibre the whole wheat starter brings to my bread. Whole wheat flour also activates your sourdough starter quicker than white flour.
Top Recipe Tip
It’s very important to remember to soak your raisins in hot water for at least 1 hour before adding them to the sourdough. They need to rehydrate, otherwise they will absorb the moisture from the dough and make it very, very stiff. Even with soaking, the raisins continue to draw the moisture out and your dough will be slightly firmer than usual. However it doesn’t seem to affect the texture and makes it easier to score a pretty design!
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