I had lunch with my friends Pascale and Caroline a couple of weeks ago, and afterward we followed Caroline back to her apartment so she could share samples of a quirky ingredient she’d just laid her hands on: hazelnut flour.
I had initially thought she was referring to finely ground hazelnuts (hazelnut meal or poudre de noisettes), but no: this is made by grinding hazelnuts finely, yes, but also removing the oil they contain, until you’re left with a delicate powder, light brown in color and supernally fragrant.
I walked home with the package of hazelnut flour pulsing with possibilities in my purse, and halfway up the hill I had decided I would bake this rustic cherry and hazelnut loaf cake.
I walked home with the little package pulsing with possibilities in my purse, and halfway up the hill I had decided what I wanted to do with it: I bought sweet cherries at the produce stall around the corner, and baked this rustic cherry and hazelnut loaf cake. Nutty, moist, and dotted with soft morsels of cherry, it did not last for long on the kitchen counter.
I elaborated on the basic formula for sweet loaf cakes that Florence laid out on her blog: it incorporates a portion of sourdough starter into the batter, and it is one of those recipes that starter bread bakers yearn for, as we are always looking for ways to use up the extra starter that the keeping of a healthy colony produces. You do not need starter to make this cake, though; the two options are outlined in the recipe below.
The hazelnut “flour” I mentioned above is made by a French manufacturer of stone-ground nut oils that once had the idea to give a second life to the round cake of pressed nut meat that remains after the oil has been completely drawn out of it. This byproduct was formerly sold to serve as cattle feed or fish bait (!) but they realized it was perhaps a case of de la confiture pour les cochons (literally, “jam for pigs,” the French version of “pearls for swine”) the day one of their clients asked if he could buy it for his own cooking needs.
They are only selling this flour to professionals for now (my friend Caroline obtained it through a chef friend of hers), so I can’t give a source for it at this time, but if you ever stumble upon something similar, you have a recipe in which to use it. And if you’re unable to find it, regular ground hazelnuts will work just as nicely, as will chestnut flour if you have some lying around.
In passing, let me share a simple tip regarding the melting of butter for baking recipes: instead of zapping it in the microwave oven (I no longer have one), I place the required amount of butter in the baking pan I’m going to use (or in an ovenproof ramekin if it’s a pan with a removable bottom), and place it in the preheating oven. After two or three minutes (I set a timer so I don’t forget) the butter is almost completely melted, and will continue to melt from the residual heat. I set the pan or ramekin aside for the butter to cool slightly, then pour it into the batter as needed, and use a pastry brush to spread the remaining traces of butter around the bottom and sides of the pan to grease it. And that, ladies and gentlemen, was my time-and-energy-saving tip of the day.