14th/15th c walnut bread recipe.
LVIII Marvelous and good walnut bread
If you want to make a bread of walnuts. Take walnuts and peel and grind them, and take good herbs, a little grated suet, sweet and strong spices and a little sugar. Put these in a mortar with the walnuts and make a paste. Then take wheat flour and make a sheet in the way (that one makes) lasagna, large and wide and thin. Put this (nut) paste within and knead all this together in the same way that one makes bread. Take the dough, when it has become soft like a cake, and put it to cook in the oven, and when it is cooked pull it out and let it cool.
My Version
I used this recipe to make a batch of walnut rolls like pecan rolls.
I ground walnuts and mixed butter, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and sugar into the walnuts into a paste. I then took bread dough and rolled it out into a thin rectangle. The walnut paste was spread onto the dough which was then rolled into a long tube and cut into slices. The slices were arranged in a pan and cooked in an oven til golden.
Sources
– Libro di cucina/ Libro per cuoco (14th/15th c.) (Anonimo Veneziano)
Translated 2003 to January 2005 CE by Helewyse de Birkestad, OL (MKA Louise Smithson) from the
transcription of Ludovico Frati (ed.): Libro di cucina del secolo XIV. Livorno 1899 prepared and made
available online by Thomas Gloning. Last updated March 28th 2005.