I See You, and I'll Raise You a Walnut

No-Knead Loaded Walnut-Olive Bread with Gruyère and Whole Grain Mustard

CHOCK-FULL

As the editorial stars would have it, The New York Times just yesterday re-blasted one of the most viral recipes they’ve ever published: Jim Lahey’s No-Knead Bread from 2006. Seemingly out of the blue! Wish I could say that I have a mole inside The Times and that this wasn’t a coincidence at all, but rather just a plot to revive the no-knead craze, leading bakers the world ‘round to NOODLE’s somewhat unorthodox version.

SHE SLICES, SHE SHINGLES, SHE LIKES TO BE SLATHERED

See, my no-knead bread is quite different from the conventional. For someone who takes pride in creating great recipes, I’m not so great at following them. 

I did some math. My recipe calls for 172% more matter by weight– in this case, walnuts, olives, Gruyère, and whole grain mustard– than flour.  That’s really… just absurd. As comparison, the matter (in his case, walnuts and raisins) in Jim Lahey’s walnut bread recipe from his book My Bread contains a ratio of 33% matter to flour.

The maximalist approach to my version sprang from a much more simple arithmetic problem: 

This Recipe = Me and The Way I Cook + a really bougie-sounding memory that makes me cringe to write but it’s the truth:

I went to the South of France when I was 16 and had an epiphanic moment with Provençal walnut bread. (See? Cringe!) I talked about that nut-packed bread for years: so laden that a thin slice, dappled with cross sections of walnuts, translucent and amorphous, looked more like a pane of stained glass than a piece of soon-to-be-toast. Like every Franco-gastronomic conundrum, I could never find anything similar in the States.  

And then, 14 years ago, lucky me actually had the opportunity to work with Jim Lahey— yes, the Lahey of The Times recipe, founder of Sullivan Street Bakery in New York, and the modern day buzz-maker of no-knead bread. When I learned the method from the no-kneader himself, I began charting my own course, overloading the dough with walnuts. Obviously. And finally. 

WALNUTS GIVE THE BREAD A PURPLE HUE. AND IT MAKES ME SMILE EVERY TIME.

It was a classic case of the “If You Can’t Find It, Make It” phenomenon.

And just like that, there I was again, a teenager romping through lavender fields in Aix, gorging on fistfuls of bread that beg for a joke of the dorky dad variety: “Want some bread with those walnuts?” 

Realize that this week’s recipe isn’t a full-fledged walnut bread because well, this newsletter isn’t called NOODLE for nothing. I meandered a bit and made several missteps before landing on the combo platter of Gruyère, whole grain mustard, olives, and lots and lots and lots of walnuts. And the result is BEYOND the sum of its parts. Beyond! If you like these components on their own, imagine them baked within the confines of a crusty, salty loaf, an amalgam of crunch and brine and cheese and spice.

THIS LOAF MIGHT MAKE YOU FEEL NUTTY

My recipe tester put it best in her text messages: 

“I can’t believe this is going to work.” “There is so much STUFF in comparison to the dough.” “I can’t believe it.” And again, “SO much stuff.” 

MID-MIX.

Finally, after the second rise, “Looking better. Even though it looks like tuna salad.”

SQUINT AND YOU’LL SEE TUNA, TOO.

I imagine that the stuffed constitution of this bread may be a bit of an insult to any baker who believes in a more conventional sort of crumb structure and proper rise. The loaf is loaded to the absolute upper threshold of add-ins, to the point where there’s just enough bread to rise without being too weighed down. You’ll see for yourself (I hope) that it doesn’t rise as much as a classic loaf of no-knead.

But it works. I’ve made variations of no-knead overloaded bread many dozens of times over these last 14 years. And what’s best: I’m always pretty loosey-goosey about how long I let it rise, the type of flour I use (all-purpose or bread flour… I’ve never been able to tell the difference in this recipe), and the exact way that I form the round. I never do the messy step of having the dough proof in a tea towel, leaving behind all its sticky dough in the towel creases. I play with the amount of flour, the amount of water, the amount of yeast.

THE SOAP BOX

I guess I just don’t think that all of the technique (and conversation about it) matters that much in a no-knead’er. As long as you let the dough go through a super long first rise (12-18 hours), this bread is forgiving, and my version is even more so precisely because it is loaded. The experience of the loaf is as much about the non-bread as it is about the bread.

THE ART OF BREAD

Woman With Fan by Modigliani

As I mixed dough after dough while developing this recipe, I kept ruminating on a Netflix doc I just saw about the climber and thief, Vjeran Tomic: The Spider-Man of Paris. Known for scaling buildings with his bare hands, Tomic didn’t pull off conventional robberies. Staring directly into camera, the burglar details the tactics behind one of the greatest art heists in history: his early morning haul of 5 paintings worth over $100 million dollars— a Matisse, a Picasso, a Braque, a Léger and a Modigliani— from the Musée d’Art Moderne.

Over the course of 6 nights, Tomic stripped the screws, one-by-one, from a street-facing window, unscrewing, rescrewing, and repainting until the window— sealed closed for decades— was ready to be opened without a trace of his presence. 

His approach was spectacular, breaking boundaries and limits. His innovation stumped guards, museum administration, police, and other famed burglars. He defied what people thought was possible, bringing into question all logic and reason. If he were a baker, he’d bake this bread.

WHAT TO DO, WHAT TO MAKE

Buffet of choices, saddle up: eat slices fresh, slightly warm and slathered with butter or olive oil. Or completely plain, whatever. With built-in mustard, it feels like a clear choice to up your sandwich game. When you’re ready to move on to toast, toast it WELL, to the point of really browning the walnuts. 

Sliced up, it’s ready to go for cheese plates, beneath any dips or spreads, as the base of a tartine of many sorts, or ripped and toasted up for panzanella or a salad. Make this bread for the promise of croutons alone.

I’ve eaten this bread topped with eggs and as a base for avocado toast on many a morn. If I haven’t finished a whole loaf within a couple of days, I’ll slice it and freeze for future toasting. 

Sure, these all feel like the obvious choices, but when you’re so busy breaking from convention, there’s nothing wrong with a little bit of the expected.

For a great article on the origins of No-Knead Bread and the women who got left out of the mainstream story about the method, read this great Eater article. 

NO-KNEAD LOADED WALNUT-OLIVE BREAD WITH GRUYÈRE AND WHOLE GRAIN MUSTARD  

Makes one 10-inch loaf