Pain aux Noix

Here's another of my occasional posts on baking my way through Bernard Clayton, Jr.'s excellent book, The Breads of France and How to Make Them in Your Own Kitchen (Bobbs Merrill 1978).

I'm not going to share the recipe with you - this is not a baking blog - but if you like to bake, I recommend you track this book down and give the recipes a try.

These are Pain aux Noix - and they came out looking just like the picture in the book!

They are made with whole wheat flour, additional bran, and a half pound of walnuts in the three one-pound loaves.

They are dense and delicious, full of nutty whole-wheat flavor. They make great cheesey toast, and cheese sandwiches.

I think I have to go eat a slice now.

P.S. I used this bread to make cheese sandwiches to take on the plane when visiting my mother in Montreal. The sandwiches were great, but we didn't need to eat them all. The next day I put the remains of a sandwich on my mother's snowy verandah railing for the birds. This squirrel found it, devoured it, and spent the next day waiting hopefully for us to hand out more sandwiches. (This bread has a lot of walnuts!)