Walnut, Raisin, and Blue Cheese Fougasse

     What to bake, what to bake?  I want something I can use my unfed starter on.  I want something breakfasty (wow I made a new word).  I want something different - not a loaf or baguette or boule. Something tasty, easy, and different. Hmmm - this fougasse looks interesting in my Bread Baker's Apprentice looks good.  Let's look on the web for variations.  Ah, this recipe walnut, raisin, and blue cheese fougasse at King Arthur looks interesting.  I thought, I'll just substitute pecans for the walnuts.  I could hardly believe that I was out of pecans.  I decided since I had to go buy them, I should but walnuts.  This was a really fun bread to make.  The recipe warned that kneading in the blue cheese would be sticky business, but I had no problems.  I'm sure the recipe  hint of freezing the crumbled blue cheese made the difference.  I also enjoyed shaping the fougasse in the "tree" shape.  I did learn I need to pull my openings a little further apart.  The slits nearly closed during baking.  When it came out the oven I had one of my infamous duh moments.  Half of my "branches" were going up and the other half were going down.  So me!  I've talked about aroma of bread before, but this was the most wonderfully aromatic bread I've baked to date.  Better that the orange cinnamon rolls, better than pumpkin pecan, just better than any other bread.  The combination of the crunchy toasted walnuts, the sweet golden raisins, and the tangy blue cheese enveloped in a moist and chewy bread is divine.
     This is a bread that I love as an adult and would have hated as a child.  Blue cheese - yuk - look at the blue veins in it,  no way am I eating that.  Golden raisins - raisins are supposed to be brownish.  Bread is supposed to be white and sick to the roof of your mouth.  I'm glad my taste buds developed as I got older.  Don't get me wrong, we grew up eating all kinds of food.  I loved hearts of palms and artichokes.  I could eat Mexican (real Mexican as well as Tex-Mex) all the time.  My mother always encouraged my brother and I to try different foods.  To this day, we are both willing to try almost anything.  There are certain foods that I don't like.  When I was a child, I would not eat my Mimi's okra gumbo.  I thought the okra seeds were crab eyes, and I was not eating crab eyes.  This coming from someone who thought she struck gold when she would pull up a soft shell crab in a net.  I love soft-shelled crabs.  I remember, as a toddler, cracking crab claws and peeling boiled shrimp and crawfish.  Catching a trout, flounder or red fish in Lake Pontchartrain meant we would have fresh fish that night.  I've been told my mama made the best red beans and rice.  I learned from her, and I've been told my beans and rice rival my mama's.  Here I must make a confession, "My name is Teresa, I'm a native New Orleanian, and I don't like red beans."  There, I've admitted it to the world.  I also am not an oyster fan.  I have a friend who like me, doesn't like oysters.  She used to say she doesn't eat anything that eats, sleeps, and sh**s in the same place.  That's not what keeps me from oysters, I just don't like them.  I hope that I continue to try new foods as I continue my journey through life.  I've learned that some times it is better to ask what it was after you try, rather than what is it before.  Oh, below is a pic of my broken branched tree.