The ex-grow house, themed bread, and rolling in walnuts

Last weekend I baked two walnut sourdough loafs. The only interesting parts:

• The first loaf was themed.
• I didn't incorporate the walnuts into the dough of the second loaf, but instead rolled them up into the loaf at shaping time.

The first loaf was for a hey-it's-our-first-night-in-our-new-house-but-this-is-not-a-housewarming party. Some friends of ours just moved into a house that, a couple of years before, had been confiscated by the DEA. Naturally, at this party a grow-house theme kept coming up. Many of us took tours of the ex-grow space, which was now accessible only by walking down a steep hillside and going through small access panels in the side of the house.

I baked a boule and carved a perfectly respectable sunrise into it, knowing from experience that people would take this sunrise as a—gasp!—marijuana leaf.

People avoided cutting the sunrise symbol for as long as possible

Some of the party guests were a little worried about what was in the bread, but my straight-arrow reputation reassured them. Yes, I'm that boringrespectable.

The second loaf was more interesting, technically. I made my regular sourdough, but instead of mixing in the walnuts, I waited until shaping time. I pressed the dough thin, added the walnuts, and rolled it all up into a log that I plopped into a rectangular banneton.

The bubbliest part of the loaf

It worked out well, and I'll do it again.

Half a slice

My shaping can only improve. Here are pictures of the dough before and after the final rise.