In 1971, English cookbook author Jane Grigson, included a bread with walnuts and onion from Burgundy, France in her book Good Things. The recipe was also featured that year in Gourmet magazine in Grigson’s article extolling the virtues of walnuts, and by 1973, her recipe had earned a place in James Beard’s acclaimed book, Beard on Bread, where it’s called “Jane Grigson’s Walnut Bread from Southern Burgundy.” In addition to walnuts and onion, the bread contains a relatively large amount of walnut or olive oil. This makes the crumb very tender and the crust has a wonderful crispiness to it. Having now made three batches of this bread, I can say I agree with all of Beard’s praise:
It makes one of the most attractively flavored and textured breads I have eaten in a long time. If you can’t find walnut oil, you can use a fruity olive oil. Baked in intriguing small round loaves, it is light and has a pleasant crust, delicious ‘nose,’ and a delicate onion flavor.
Since the advent of the internet, the recipe has been republished and lauded on countless food blogs. It’s even mentioned and photographed in a 2020 Food52 article on top bread books.
Now we’re giving the recipe another revival but with some modifications: using high extraction flour and leavening it with sourdough, and as far as my web-search uncovered, this may be the first offering of a recipe for this bread with sourdough starter. Of course, people in the south of Burgundy would have made it with sourdough before the invention of commercial yeast so our take is old school as usual.
Recipe Modifications and Notes
- Instead of all purpose flour, this recipe uses Breadtopia’s all purpose high extraction flour, which is stoneground organic hard red winter wheat berries with some of the bran sifted out. This flour is equivalent to a mid-strength French T85 flour, about halfway between white and whole wheat flour. I like to think this is similar to flour people in Burgundy would have used before roller milling and white flour became widespread in the late 1800s.
- I used more chopped walnuts as per the suggestion of some online reviews, but kept the onion raw despite some reviewers prefering it pre-cooked. As long as you chop pretty fine, the onion cooks during the bake.
- The recipe below has both sourdough and yeast versions. The process times are dramatically different for the two leavening options, 3-4 hours versus 20-24 hours, but the effort is about the same, and the complexity of flavors with sourdough can’t be overstated. In the sourdough version, you build a sweet stiff levain in order to favor yeast in the sourdough starter and the bread turns out not sour at all.
- This bread browns very quickly, which may be why the original recipe has you divide the dough into smaller boules that cook through before the crust burns. This browning is likely due to the large amount of oil in the dough, almost 15% in baker’s percentage. This oil is also why the sourdough fermentation time is quite long. Grigson’s original recipe is for four 450-gram boules, but the recipe below is for two 450-gram boules or one 900-gram boule. She also has you bake the boules freestanding on a sheet pan but since this tends to lead to over-browning of the crust, I opted for an enclosed baking vessel, lid on for most of the bake, at her suggested temperature of 450°F.
One large boule (sourdough) in Cloche Baker
Two small boules (yeast) in Hearth Baker
The yeast variation is on the left and the sourdough variation is on the right in the photos below. You can see that the duration and acidity of the sourdough process seemed to pull more color from the walnut skin into the crumb on the right.
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- Two boules; no scoring on left (yeast)
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- Single large boule (sourdough)
Jane Grigson’s Walnut and Onion Bread with Sourdough or Yeast
Jane Grigson’s classic bread recipe featured in the book Beard on Bread gets a new twist here with high extraction stoneground flour and sourdough leavening. Enjoy the aromatic walnut and onion flavors, tender crumb and crispy crust of this bread from Burgundy, France.
Ingredients
Yeast
- 7 grams instant yeast (2 tsp)
- 370 grams milk, room temperature * see Notes for more temp details (1 1/2 cups)
- 12 grams sugar (1 Tbsp)
- 360 grams all purpose high extraction flour (2 3/4 cups)
- 8 grams salt (1 1/2 tsp)
- 53 grams walnut oil or extra virgen olive oil (1/4 cup)
- 50 grams onion, raw and finely chopped (heaping 1/3 cup)
- 30 grams walnuts, chopped * see Notes about toasting (1/3 cup)
Sourdough
- Sweet Stiff Levain
- 60 grams flour (scant 1/2 cup)
- 37 grams milk, warmed to room temperature (2 1/2 Tbsp)
- 12 grams sugar (1 Tbsp)
- 20 grams sourdough starter (1 Tbsp)
- Final Dough
- 300 grams all purpose high extraction flour (2 1/3 cups)
- 8 grams salt (1 1/2 tsp)
- 340 grams milk, room temperature * see Notes for more temp details (scant 1 1/2 cups)
- 53 grams walnut oil or extra virgen olive oil (1/4 cup)
- All of the ripe sweet stiff levain, broken in to 6-8 pieces
- 50 grams onion, raw and finely chopped (heaping 1/3 cup)
- 30 grams walnuts, chopped * see Notes about toasting (1/3 cup)
Instructions
- The yeast version of this recipe takes 2-3 hours from mixing to oven, while the sourdough version takes close to 24 hours for the entire process (8-10 hours for the levain to ripen; 10-12 hours for the bulk fermentation; and 1-3 hours for the final proof).
- The yeast and sourdough instructions merge after the mixing stage.
Yeast Blooming and Dough Mixing
- Combine the milk, sugar and yeast in a small bowl and let it sit a few minutes until foamy.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the flour and salt. Pour in the bloomed yeast mixture and the oil and mix. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and mix for several minutes more until the dough wraps around the hook. If the dough is too wet to do this, add more flour slowly, one tablespoon at a time, mixing and scraping in between. See the photo gallery for dough texture.
Sweet Stiff Levain Build and Dough Mixing
- Put the sweet stiff levain ingredients in a small bowl. Mix and knead until you have a small dough ball. Press into a jar with space for tripling and mark the level of the levain. Cover and let rise for 8-12 hours. It is ready to use when between double and triple in size.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, add the flour, salt, milk, oil, and the ripe levain torn into small pieces. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and mix for several minutes more until the dough wraps around the hook. If the dough is too wet to do this, add more flour slowly, one tablespoon at a time, mixing and scraping in between. See the photo gallery for dough texture.
First Rise (both variations)
- Transfer the dough to a bowl or straightwalled container. Cover and let rise to about double in size. This will take roughly 1 hour for the yeast dough and 8-12 hours for the sourdough.
Additions
- Spread the fermented dough on a clean very lightly oiled work surface and sprinkle it with the chopped walnuts and onion. Roll up the dough and knead it for a minute or so. Make sure you flip the dough over about halfway through; this will help the additions not get concentrated in the center of the dough ball.
- At this point you can divide the dough in two or leave it as is. To bake divided dough, you will need a larger baking vessel to fit both small boules (spun iron cloche, hearth baker, combo baker) or two baking vessels.
- Shape the doughs into boules or any other shape you prefer.
Final Proof
- Place the doughs into proofing baskets seam-side up and cover — or — place on pieces of parchment paper seam-down and cover with upside down bowls.
- Let the boules proof until they have expanded a bit in size (see photo gallery). In the range of 45-90 minutes for the yeast version and 1 1/2 – 2 1/2 hours for the sourdough version.
- Preheat your oven and baking vessel to 450°F for 20-30 minutes.
- Flip the doughs out of the proofing basket into your baking vessel — or — transfer the doughs on parchment paper into the baking vessel.
- You can skip scoring the dough unless you ended the first rise before the dough fully doubled or didn’t include either of the additions. If a little underproofed and not weighed down by additions, scoring is needed to prevent oven spring bursting the side of the boule.
- If you are baking in a cast iron vessel rather than clay, lower the temperature to 425°F after 20 minutes in both baking scenarios. At that point, check on the base of the bread as well and slide a sheet pan under the vessel if it is getting dark.
- For two small boules, bake 25 minutes at 450°F, lid on; and 5-10 minutes more, lid off.
- For one undivided boule, bake 40 minutes at 450°F, lid on; and 5-10 minutes more, lid off.
- When the breads are done, they should have an internal temperature over 200°F.
- Let the bread cool for several hours before you slice it.
Notes
Toasting the walnuts: The nuts that stud the bread crust are more likely to burn if you toast the walnuts before chopping and adding them to the dough.
Milk temperature: This dough rises relatively slowly because of the large amount of oil in it. Warming the milk is one way to counter-balance this a bit. For the yeast recipe, this is also part of the yeast blooming process. For the sourdough variation, I only warmed the milk to room temperature to stretch the rise times out even longer and allow for sleep. The sweet stiff levain and the dough take all day/night to double at about 70°F. If your kitchen or proofing box are significantly warmer, you may want to use cold milk or plan for shorter rise times.
