Nick Malgieri's Fig and Almond Bread

This will be the first bread I've baked along with the others in the facebook group, Artisan Bread Bakers.  Phyl, the organizer of this group, has chosen Nick Malgieri's Fig and Almond bread as the Bread of the Month for September.  I didn't see Phyl's orginal announcement of this bread for September, but saw it a little into September and started flipping through Nick's book, The Modern Baker thinking that must be where the recipe had come from.  Alas, it wasn't in any of his current books, and so I had another thought and popped on over to Nick Malgieri's blog and lo and behold, he has given his fans a sneak peak into a new, upcoming book of his. 

I was so thrilled that he chose to divulge one of the bread recipes to any who might want to try it.  I couldn't pass this Fig and Almond Bread recipe by and quickly picked up a  6 oz. bag of Sun Maid Calimyrna Figs at the store.  (If I already have part of the ingredients sitting out on my counter, then I'm more likely to complete the projects that I want to get done that month). 

I thought the recipe was easy to follow, although it would have been nice to have a few 'why' explanations for some of the steps, especially for novice bread bakers and inquiring minds. 

I followed the recipe pretty much as written.  I did use instant yeast instead of active dry and in that case, you can just add the instant yeast to the dry ingredients listed in step #3 and can just skip step #2.  The Sun Maid dried figs sealed in a bag are usually pretty moist so I didn't need to steep my figs in step #1. 

The ingredients are straightforward and were all in my pantry.  I used 15 grams of brown sugar instead of granulated sugar, since the sticky, sugary sweet figs just seemed to call out brown sugar to me instead of white.  I love, love, love figs and it was hard not to eat them as I cut them into a 1/2 inch dice.  As I was handling them, I felt as if I'd just reached into Pooh's honey stash and pulled out some treasure he'd stashed along with it.  I think Pooh would like figs don't you?

I used a single edged razor to score one of the boule's with an 'X' and I gave the other one an overlapping box cut.  The bread baked up wonderfully, but with not a whole lot of oven spring.  I brushed the loaves liberally with the melted butter after they came out of the oven and we ate half of one of the loaves with dinner.

I asked my husband, who is usually very generous, and not as stingy as myself, who we might share the other loaf with, and he replied that we should keep both for ourselves.  This bread was that good! 

Thank you Nick, for a wonderful recipe to add to our list of family favorites!!

Great pick Phyl!

Hazelnut and Fig Bread w/ Fennel & Rosemary (Mellow Bakers: April)

Finally, I did a Mellow Bakers April bread yesterday.  I had wanted to try the Pain au Levain sourdough first, but I don't think my stiff starter was vigorous enough to raise a 1 1/2 lb piece of dough, but I might try it later.

The hazelnut and fig bread was the April bread that I was really looking forward to.  My first task was to decide what kind of figs to use.  Well, that shouldn't be hard, given that there are only over 700 varieties of figs.   I finally settled on a package of Sun-Maid California Mission figs, since they were on sale, and I thought they might be fresher/moister having been sealed in a bag.  The figs at Whole Foods in the bulk bins looked very dry and almost crusty.  Early yesterday I gathered my four main ingredients which Hamelman says make this bread 'loaded'.  They were fennel seed, rosemary, roasted hazelnuts, and my figs:

Its funny how just the other day I was reading on the mellow bakers site where someone said that the HOME column is prone to error.  Well, I think I found one as I was adding all my ingredients (except the hazelnuts and figs) to my stand mixer bowl.  The 2 1/4 cups of water given in the HOME column is incorrect.   I knew right away, after adding 1 1/8 cups of water for half the recipe, to the other ingredients, that there was not enough water.  I adjusted by adding more though and everything was fine, but I will probably double check the HOME column from now on before starting a recipe.

My dough did not exactly seem moderately loose as I did my mixing on first speed.  In fact all the way through the kneading, my dough seemed very, very stiff, but I just kept going.  I added my figs and hazelnuts after the ~ 3 minutes of kneading.  The figs I quartered and the hazelnuts I chopped a bit before adding them in.  I turned the mixer to low speed, waiting for these additions to get incorporated, but it just wasn't happening  in the mixer.  I stopped the mixer, and lifted the dough, along with all the nuts and figs at the bottom of the bowl, out onto my silicone mat.  After much difficulty in kneading the dough, I was finally satisfied that everything was OK, even though the occasional nut kept popping out and figs insisted on poking themselves through the surface of the dough.  The dough went through its bulk and final fermentations and it was ready to be scored and tossed in the oven.  I finally found some razor blades, thanks to Abby at Stir it! Scrape it! Mix it! Bake it!., who told me where to look.  I was anxious to try scoring this loaf with the razor blade, as I had done quite a poor job of it on a loaf of Vermont Sourdough a couple weeks back.

Everything worked beautifully!!  No problems scoring and I steamed the oven diligently, squirting the walls of the oven at least 4 or 5 times during the first 10-15 minutes of baking.  I raised the oven rack up one notch that my stone sits on, since previous breads were baking too quickly and browning a bit much on the bottom.  This time my loaf finished in 36 minutes and was beautiful and smelled heavenly.  The scoring opened up nicely (I think), and I didn't have any unusual blowouts from the bottom side.  The bottom was perfectly flat and not too browned.  Oh, so nice:

Hubby and I haven't discussed whether we liked this loaf better than the whole wheat w/ hazelnuts and currants made in February, but I'm guessing it is a close tie.  This loaf is definitely loaded with lotsa flavor!!! 

Thank you for visiting my blog this time around and stop by Living in the Kitchen with Puppies to see the lovely Fig and Walnut buns that Natashya made from the same recipe!