Wholemeal Walnut Bread

I booked my flights to France this week to visit my parents at the end of September and was looking for a French inspired bread to bake this week. I'm really looking forward to seeing them again and the huskies! They have 2 beautiful huskies called Hurko and Lobo and just for fun here's a picture of them. It's not easy to get them to pose nicely together but this is one of my favourite photo's of them on the wall in the garden. Hurko is the one standing up and lazy Lobo is lying down.

Anyway back to the baking, I decided to bake a version of 'pain aux noix' or walnut bread, I've had this before in France and it's delicious.  It's the perfect accompaniment to cheese and I found some half price Boursin cheese in Tesco flavoured with figs and nuts to go with it. I might have to get more in a few days if it's still on special offer because it seems to keep spreading itself on the bread and ending up in my mouth!

Ingredients - makes 1 large loaf

150g strong white bread flour
500g strong wholemeal bread flour
100g chopped walnuts
1 tbsp dried active yeast or 7g sachet fast action yeast
50g dark muscovado sugar
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tsp salt
400ml lukewarm water

1. Reactivate the yeast according to pack instructions if using dried active yeast otherwise skip this step.
2. Mix together the flours, sugar (break up any lumps), walnuts and salt, add the yeast, olive oil and water and mix to a dough. You may need a little more water depending on your flour. This should be quite a sticky dough to begin with but it becomes more manageable as it is kneaded. Knead the dough for 10 minutes then place into a lightly oiled bowl and cover with clingfilm and leave for an hour or until doubled in size.
3. Knock back the dough and knead lightly and shape the loaf how you want it, I went for an oval shaped loaf. Place onto a non stick baking tray and cover with lightly oiled clingfilm and leave to double in size again for about 40 minutes.
4. Preheat the oven to 220C and make several deep slashes diagonally across the loaf with a sharp knife and then bake for 35 minutes until the base of loaf sounds hollow when tapped. Cool on a wire rack and then devour!

I'm entering this into Ros and Caroline's Alphabakes challenge where the letter is 'W' this month and for July it is hosted by Caroline. I'm also entering it into yeast spotting and into Cooking Whole Foods where the ingredient is wholemeal flour and is hosted by Nivedhanam