I decided to make the “Renewal” menu at the end of the book- Date Night In.

For us, making the menu was inspired totally by the Chocolat Chaud dessert that my Son wanted for dinner.  But I decided might as well make the rest.

I’ve been baking a lot of bread lately, and was a little dubious about going away from my current favorite crusty bread recipe- but decided to give the Walnut Bread a go.

I will say- ingredients- super easy.  Nothing weird.  AND I love that you just throw all the ingredients in a bowl, mix, and let sit overnight.  No fussing with transferring to a new bowl, waiting for yeast to activate- anything.  VERY easy.  You do have to plan a day in advance- but everyone plans dinner a week out- right?  (joke)

Day two:  Dump bread onto floury surface- and you sort of tuck and twist like making a boule until you have a nice round loaf.  That gets Transferred to a flour-towel bowl.   (Never tried this technique before.)  This is for the second rise while your dutch oven heats up.

Then the tricky part.  Transfer your dough to the dutch oven- I did mine on parchment paper.  Directions didn’t say to do that- but I couldn’t help it.  Had to.  My dough totally stuck to my flour-towel and created a weird surface on top of my dough-ball.  I was also worried that all of the jostling would affect the rise situation- but no matter-into the oven it goes.  Fingers Crossed.

It came out lovely!  (Lumpy top aside)

A few notes:

• Next time, I’m going to try letting it rise in a parchment sling instead of the flour towel.  We’ll see…
• I was pleasantly surprised at how walnutty it was throughout.  I thought that it would taste like a loaf of bread with walnuts in it- not the case.  All the dough seemed to soak up the walnut flavor.  Yum.
• For me?  Salt.  I think a generous amount of Maldon salt on top of the loaf would have made it even better.

I would make again if I needed this sort of a loaf.  Won’t be replacing my standard because it isn’t quite as versatile- but it is definitely worthy of adding into the rotation.