Winter is the perfect time to make Maple Fig Walnut Bread – or any yeast-risen bread – because you get to crank your oven up, and the kitchen gets toasty warm. I prefer to do it on a day that is free of commitments – a Saturday that follows a Friday night snowstorm, a Sunday that follows a night of heavy drinking one of those really long, hectic Saturdays that starts with that aggravated chaos known as “grocery shopping on the weekend” and ends with having to testify before Congress (AKA dinner with the in-laws) … a day that I intend to spend hanging around the house wondering what new way Mary Crawley will find to insult her sister, and wishing the Dowager Countess were running in the primaries against Trump and Cruz. Those days don’t happen as often as I’d like.

Maple Fig Walnut Bread has a delicate, crispy/flaky crust. Its crumb is what you’d expect from a handcrafted Pullman loaf. It might be suitable as an exotic sandwich bread, but it’s more likely that you’ll want to eat this bread on its own, as an accompaniment to a mild, white, milky cheese, or as toast, slathered with butter and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar.

What you need to make 2 loaves, or 1 loaf and 12 rolls, or 24 rolls:

Poolish:

1 packet (¼ oz.) active dry yeast
4 oz. spring water (½ cup), room temperature
4 1/8 oz. bread flour (¾ cup)

Final Dough:

8 oz. walnuts (1¾ cups), ground
19¼ oz. bread flour (3½ cups)
10 oz. spring water (1¼ cup), room temperature
2¾ oz. maple syrup (¼ cup)
½ oz. coarse salt (1 Tbs)
10 oz. dried black mission figs, stems removed , chopped (about 9 oz., or 1¾ cups chopped)

Egg Wash:

1 egg
1 tsp cream

How to make the polish:

1. Proof ½-tsp yeast in water if the yeast is anywhere near its expiration date. Otherwise, simply toss ½-tsp yeast in a bowl with the water and go ahead immediately with next step.
2. Mix in flour by hand, 100 strokes. Switch hands half-way through, because the last thing you want to do is develop uneven musculature. Cover with damp cloth overnight (timing is flexible).

How to make the bread/rolls:

1. Place poolish, remaining yeast, and all dough ingredients into a stand mixer and knead until the dough cleans bowl. It will be sticky.
2. Remove to a lightly floured surface and briefly knead/fold in the figs. The dough will become tacky rather than sticky.
3. Place in a covered bowl and let rise ½-hour. Fold. (A lot of people like to fold only after the first rise is complete. I like to fold more often than that.) Let rise 2 hours more, or until it passes the finger poke test. (A lot of people like to punch their dough at this point, and then they wonder why we have so much gun violence in America. Take it from me, don’t punch your dough. Instead, just go on with the next step.)
4. Divide in half. Fold. Form into balls. Rest 15 minutes. If making rolls, skip to those directions, below.
5. Form loaves into torpedoes and place in buttered bread pans.
6. Cover with buttered plastic wrap and let rise about 1½-hours, or until the dough passes the finger tap test. The dough should rise above the pans. If you need to encourage this, place is a barely-warmed oven.
7. Beat the egg with the cream. Brush loaves/rolls with egg wash.
8. Bake loaves is a well-preheated 450°F oven for 15 minutes. Adjust heat to 400°F and continue for another 15 minutes. Bread will be deeply browned and will sound hollow when tapped. Bake rolls at 400°F for 15 minutes. If baking a loaf/roll combo, follow bread directions and check rolls at 12 minutes.
9. Rest loaves/rolls on a rack for a few minutes, then roll them out of the pans and let them cool on the rack. Rolls are delicious once they’ve cooled to the point of being pleasantly warm. Bread should be fully cooled before slicing.

Rolls:

2 oz. butter (4 Tbs)
1 oz. maple syrup (2 generous Tbs)
1 tsp cinnamon
2 Tbs sugar
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp ginger

1. While your balls are resting on the countertop, melt butter with syrup just until liquid enough blend the two. Set aside to cool. (See note about measurements, below.)
2. Mix cinnamon with 2 tsp sugar; set aside. Mix nutmeg with 2 tsp sugar; set aside. Mix ginger with 2 tsp sugar; set aside. (See note about measurements, below.)
3. Roll each dough ball into a 1-foot square. Brush with butter mixture. Sprinkle cinnamon sugar over 1/3 of each dough square, vertically. To the right of that, create a similar-width vertical stripe with the nutmeg sugar. Sprinkle the ginger sugar over the remaining 1/3. Roll. Cut into 12ths. Knock them onto their sides and lay them into buttered muffin tins.
4. Return to bread-making directions.

Notes:

• The roll measurements I’ve given are for 24 rolls. This will produce rolls that are just the slightest bit sticky. If you like your rolls to be really sticky, double the butter-syrup and increase the spices by 50%.
• The rolls are barely sweet. If you like them really sweet, glaze them.
• The Finger Poke: a lot of bread recipes will tell you to let the dough rise until it’s doubled in volume. Yet they never bother to give you the formula necessary to make that calculation. Here it is: V = ⁴⁄₃πr³. So uh … good luck eyeballing that. A so-called better alternative is the finger poke test. Unfortunately, every description I’ve ever read of the finger poke test, as well as every video I’ve ever seen of it, was simply too vague to be useful. Here’s my take: if you let the same dough rise in the same bowl – or if you stick the same fingers into the same dough – time after time, you’ll eventually come to recognize when it’s properly risen, by sight and by feel. Risen dough looks voluminous and feels light, soft, and pillowy. How voluminous? How light? How soft? How pillowy? If you make the same bread in the same way under the same conditions many times, you’ll eventually get the feel of it. It’s a lot like piano playing or sex: if you don’t know what you’re doing, books and videos are as likely to be misinformative as they are to be helpful. The only way to learn is to do, do, do. Cast aside any fear and doubt, rely on your instincts, and let each experience inform your next performance. (And make sure your opening salvo/first few measures are incredible.)

Maple Fig Walnut Bread

Credit for images on this page: Make It Like a Man! This content was not solicited by Monica Mills of Bread for the World, one of Washington’s top grassroots lobbyists – even though I firmly believe that Congress cannot act in the best interests of the people unless they are guided by the interests of bread. Furthermore, this post was not written in exchange for anything from the Kinsey Institute Library, which houses the Masters and Johnson collection. In a sense so obscure that it is definitely misleading, it was sponsored by the piano department of the Manhattan School of Music, but of course all my opinions are overblown.

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