Walnut Whole Wheat Bread

Ingredients

• 3 tbsp (1 ½ oz) orange juice
• 1 cup (8 oz) lukewarm water
• 2 tbsp (7/8 oz) vegetable oil (I used extra virgin olive)
• 3 cups (12 oz) traditional whole wheat flour (I used 1 cup stone ground whole wheat and 2 cups white whole wheat)
• 2 tbsp (1 oz) firmly packed brown sugar
• 1 ¼ tsp salt (I used Celtic Sea Salt)
• ¾ cup (3 oz) walnuts or pecans, finely chopped ( I used walnuts, very finely chopped, almost powdered)
• 2 ½ tsp instant yeast (I used dry active, mixing it with the oj, water and brown sugar to proof it)

Instructions

Combine all the ingredients and mix until just moist. Let sit for 45 minutes, then knead-by hand, mixer or bread machine-until you have soft, smooth dough. I kneaded by hand for a long time (10-12 minutes) and never reached a “soft” dough. Everything turned out great anyway.
Don’t add extra flour while kneading whole grain yeast breads, its makes them more dry and dense. Oil your hands if necessary.
COver and allow the dough to rise until its puffy and nearly double in bulk, 1-2 hours.
Lightly grease a 8 ½ × 4 ½ inch loaf pan. Gently deflate (just squeeze, no need to “punch down”) dough, and shape into log. Place it in prepared pan.
Cover it gently with lightly greased plastic wrap and allow to rise till it’s crowned about 1 inch over the rim of the pan, 1 ½ to 2 ½ hours.
Near the end of rising, preheat over to 350.
Uncover and bake bread for 40 minutes, tenting it with foil after 15 minutes. The bread is down when its golden brown and an instant-read thermometer inserted into center reads 190 degrees F.
Remove it from the oven, and after a minute or two turn it out onto a rack.
Brush with melted butter if you desire. This will keep the crust soft. (I did not).
Cool the bread for 30 minutes before slicing.