I love bread. I also love making it, and I'm determined to learn how to bake really good bread. Sometime ago I bought this Ballymaloe Bread book, 'cause I wanted to learn how to make brown bread. The book gives some good recipes for brown bread, but I've always modified them a bit. And anyway the bread just won't taste the same if you bake it from Finnish flour.
But anyway, yesterday I wanted to try something else, and ended up making this walnut-raisin bread. This book (and other foreign books, i.e. not Finnish) tells you to mix the dry yeast with the water and let it stand for 5 minutes, to activate the yeast. All the Finnish recipes always tell you to mix the east in with the flour. Anyway, this is what the yeast looks like after 5 minutes.
And then kneading the dough starts. Even though I had a keen helper, it was hard work! I think I didn't put enough of water, as the dough was really tough and dry.
The recipe included walnuts and raisins (which I substituted with cranberries). They were only added towards the end of the kneading, which was a bit difficult, as they kept falling from the dough. Again a bit more water might have prevented this.
And this is what it looked liked when it was done! The texture was okay, and the walnuts worked really well in the bread. And it tasted freat!
