“Date-Nut Bread” sounds like it should be a quickbread – sweet and “cakesque,” like a banana bread. But this one isn’t. This is a slow-rise, yeast bread. A “bread” bread. And it’s pounded full of nuts and dates. It has a dense crumb, but it’s not heavy. Its crust is crisp and downright flaky. The nuts are far forward in the taste profile, followed by the familiar rustic taste of a homemade, artisan loaf. A sweet bell rung by the dates takes you by surprise, clearly but quietly at the finish. Delicious with butter; make’s wonderful toast.
Makes 2 three-pound loaves
For the starter:
4 oz. warm (but not hot) water (1/2 cup)
1/2 tsp of active, dry yeast (from a typical 3/4-oz. packet – reserve the remainder)
4.125 oz. of unbleached, white bread flour (3/4 cup)
Pour water into a small mixing bowl. Sprinkle yeast over it, and let it stand for 1 minute. Stir. Add flour and stir until combined. Then, stir vigorously for 100 strokes. The mixture should look more like a thick-as-a-milk-shake, sticky batter than a dough. If you need to adjust, add more water or more flour. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula, and cover the bowl with buttered plastic wrap or a damp tea towel. Let sit overnight.
For the dough:
1/4 lb chopped almonds (a scant cup)
1/4 lb chopped peanuts (3/4 cup)
1 lb chopped dates (2 cups, at least)
20 oz. water (2 1/2 cups)
2 oz. rye flour (1/2 cup) – for color and flavor (substitute wheat flour)
1 Tbs salt
Remaining yeast from packet
2 lbs bread flour (about 7 slightly generous cups)
A bread with peanuts in it makes one helluva PBJ.
Phase 1: Can God create a boulder so heavy that he cannot lift it?
Scrape the starter into a large mixing bowl, and add everything except the bread flour. Stir it all up. The starter will have a tendency to stick to itself, so you have to work to get it to homogenously combine with the other ingredients. Once you’ve done this, add a cupful of bread flour and stir it in. Keep doing this – adding by the cupful and stirring – until you’ve created something that you can no longer stir. (This for some reason reminds me of the “can God create” question, but let’s not get sidetracked.) Once you’ve achieved this paradox, dump a cupful of flour onto your countertop, spread it around, and scrape the sticky, unstirrable mass onto it.
Phase 2: Approaching the bench
Use your hand and a bench scraper to fold and stretch, and fold and stretch, and fold and stretch the dough, rotating it as you do, until it has incorporated the flour. (This is called “working the dough.” It’s not the same as kneading. It helps incorporate air, which will help produce a light, fluffy loaf.) Add another cupful and continue. Repeat this until you’ve attained something you’re prepared to stick both hands into. It’s going to be sticky; you’re going to have to live with that. But it will be a coherent-enough mass that you can start working it with your hands without feeling that sticking your hands into it accomplished nothing more than coating them with a thick gob of incredibly sticky goop. It needs to be able to produce enough resistance that you can start effectively kneading it. Until then, keep using the bench scraper.
Phase 3: Should I go to the gym? Or should I just knead some bread?
Begin to knead the dough, adding flour by the quarter-cupsful, and occasionally using the bench scraper to clean the countertop. Soon, you will achieve a dough that is more tacky than sticky, and you will no longer need to use the bench scraper to clean the countertop. Believe it or not, this is where the real work begins. Set a timer for 15 minutes, and knead that dough. Use your shoulders and try to transfer the weight of your upper body onto the dough as you knead it, so that you’re leveraging your weight and not kneading by muscle power alone. I have a section of countertop that is an inch lower than standard – which doesn’t sound like much, but it’s enough to allow me (a six-foot tall man) to really get on top of that dough.
(I have another section of countertop that is eight inches higher than standard, which allows me to do close-up work while standing. None of this was by my design; it’s a custom job by the guy who built this place. I initially hated it, but now swear by it. Anyway, back to our bread … you’ll need a few off-topic tangents to keep your mind busy during what will feel like the longest 15 minutes of your life.)
During this time, you may find yourself needing to add a bit of flour to the dough, but you’ll feel this need infrequently, and one or two tablespoons of flour will suffice. When time is finally up, form the dough into a ball, and let it rest on the counter while you clean out and dry the mixing bowl from which you dumped it. Coat the bowl with butter or oil. Place the dough into the bowl upside down, give it a half twist, then lift it out, invert it, and put it back in. This gets the dough coated with butter/oil. Cover the bowl loosely with buttered plastic wrap, and let it sit for about 2 hours.
Phase 4: It must rise again, in accordance with the scripture
Turn the dough out of the bowl onto a barely-floured countertop. Divide it in two. It’s worth taking the time to weigh it, so that both loaves are exactly the same. They’ll rise the same, and they’ll bake the same. Shape the loaves one way or another, or put them into bread pans. Cover them with the same oiled plastic wrap you used before, and feel good about not wasting. Let them rise until they clear the pans, or until they otherwise seem good and ready, about 1.5 hours. In the last 20 minutes of rising, preheat the oven to 450ºF.
Final Phase: Into the fire with you
As soon as the loaves are in the oven, lower the heat to 400ºF and bake for 30 minutes. Half-way through, start checking and continue to check every five, to make sure they don’t get too dark. Turn the heat down and/or cover them with foil if they do. Once done, turn immediately out of the pans, and let the loaves completely cool on racks.
Yeast-Risen Date Nut Bread
Credit for images on this page: Make It Like a Man! This content was not solicited, nor written in exchange for anything. In doing research for this recipe, I this bread flour conversion calculator useful.
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This looks amazing! Bread made with a starter tastes particularly aromatic and delicious. Good job, Jeff.
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Jeff – this bread looks fantastic! I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a yeast bread with both dates and nuts. I’m sure it’s incredible for sandwiches. As for me, I’d like to toast it lightly, spread with butter and just a sprinkle of cinnamon sugar. That + my chai tea = heaven. Thanks for the inspiration!
Oh, it’d make great cinnamon toast!
When I saw your headline I though for sure this would be a cakey bread (like you said) but so delighted at this texture! And love that that sweetness from the dates makes itself known at the very end – this is one fantastic bread bread, Jeff!
Thanks, Shashi.
This is lovely. Yeasted breads are my favorite, and the more goodies in them, the better! I’d have this with cheese.
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Oh, you’d love this with cheese. I think breads like this are made for cheese.
What a beautiful bread! It’s really sad how I get excited over bread recipes and this one is heading to my must make list!
That’s not sad at all! I think making bread is one of those really amazing, homemade things … and I love that it is more-or-less an unchanged process going back generations upon generations.
Truth be told, my favorite thing to do in the kitchen is make yeasted breads. Well, that and smoke meats. I haven’t made bread in a while, and this post is totally making me want to go get that yeast out. I love a good homemade bread when it’s lightly toasted…and this one sounds delicious, Jeff! And if I mix this by hand, then I can skip the workout for the day, too. Bonus!
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I know what you mean about the workout! I’ve been studying up on ways to make bread with less elbow grease, but I really don’t mind the kneading.
I’m a bit terrified of yeast. Like buttercream frosting, I always seem to fail (or at least not hit the high marks I see in posts like this one). But like buttercream, I don’t mind giving it another go (someday). GREG
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I know what you mean. It takes some getting used to. I think that, when it seems difficult, for me at least, it’s because I’m expecting it to work according to my schedule, and what you really have to do, is adapt your schedule around it.
Terrific recipe — wonderfully through description on the art of mixing, working, kneading dough. And yes, I at first thought this was going to be a quick bread when I read the title! Anyway, good stuff — thanks.
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Hallelujah! Your loaf has risen, so to speak. Nice bread recipe Jeff. We’re nut free in our house, but was thinking of substituting pumpkin and sunflower seeds. Love the idea of the sweetness the dates add.
Now about your link to abovetopsecert, Interesting, thread…
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Yeah, I think I had too much time on my hands when writing that post.
Glad you included it. I’m still pondering it.
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My Mom used to bake bread when she was angry or frustrated, this was before gyms were popular! I’ve been making bread more and more with starters or sponges (just baked an awesome focaccia with rosemary), it really makes for a wonderful, light, airy texture. I’m not a huge lover of quick breads mainly because I find them too dense, this is a wonderful solution! Now to check how many dates I have!
How funny! I go for long walks when I’m angry. I think baking when angry would make things much harder for me, since it requires patience. In addition to what you mention, I think you get better flavors with starters, and a much longer shelf life. Somewhere along the way, I realized that bread – like salad or a taco shell – is a welcoming vehicle for practically anything you want to knead into it, so enjoy finding new combinations.
A lovely fresh bread that looks quite amazing! I love all of your add inns!
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Thank you!
The recipe looks great. I love to bake a lot of different combos and flavors, even international. Do you think this recipe could be made into dinner rolls also with a flavored butter to top them off? Thank you so very much for this recipe. Searched a lot of sites, and yours stood out.
Thank you so much for your comment! I absolutely think you could make rolls from this bread. They wouldn’t be the light and fluffy type: they’d be more dense and hearty. You’ll have to reduce the baking time, of course. It’s not a “sweet” bread, but dates are sugary, so it does have sweet notes. This makes me want to think of honey butter, or maybe a fruit compound butter. On the other hand, if that’s not going to jibe with your dinner menu, than I’d consider picking something out of the dinner’s profile, and see about taking that to the rolls. Parsley seems like a good choice.
Great recipe Jeff! Makes for a really good turkey sandwich.
BTW — more men cooking and baking and eventually ALL kitchen countertops will be 8 inches higher.
Wow! Glad you liked it, JB. And yeah, those 8 inches have saved my back many times over.
Looks delicious! try soon…