The Pearl's Pane coi santi // Maggie Glezer, Artisan Baking

This bread is marked as Advanced in the Artisan Baking book, and the chief reason seems to be the difficulty of kneading in by hand a huge quantity of walnuts and raisins, not a few of which wanted to pop out and roll across the counter. This bread takes the full day to make, plus the preparation of the starter and levain the day before.

 

Ingredient Notes:

KAF All-Purpose

KAF White Wheat Flour

KAF Rye Blend Flour 

Preparation: This recipe calls for levain, which is made the day before from a starter that has been refreshed within 8 hours. Here's my levain going down for the night:

The flours are mixed with water and left to autolyse. After adding the salt and levain and mixing with the dough hook, I had a very wet dough, not the firm dry dough called for in the recipe. This is the second recipe from this book that has turned out fairly wet, so I'm guessing there's a mismatch between the measuring cups I have and the book measurements. I don't have an accurate scale, so we'll be measuring more generously from now on.

A tablespoon of bread flour, plus additional flour during the hand-kneading stage, got it a bit firmer. After mixing in the walnuts and raisins (this took some rests for the dough to relax further), the dough went down for an hour, was turned, and back in the bowl for another 3-4 hours. Here it is before the rise:

After that, it was cut in two, shaped into batards (one shaped by rolling and pinching, the other in the traditional letter-fold way)  and left to rest on a floured cloth (couche):

...for another 3 hours. The breads became puffy but not huge. (In the picture above, you can already see that the walnuts are staining the dough with dark swirls.)

The breads were then placed on parchment paper, shallowly cut, and slid onto a baking stone, 425 in my gas oven. And the result:

 

Results: With so many raisins and such a long rise, the bread can't help but taste sweet. The small quantities of rye and whole wheat definitely deepen the flavor and make it more complex. The bread is chewy.

I checked website for the Pearl Bakery (whose bread inspired Glezer's recipe), and note that their version of pane coi santi includes black pepper -- something to keep in mind for my next go at this bread.