Tag Archives: Kamut

May 3rd, 2019

Spring bread

Frhlingskasten-23It is spring – finally! I bath in yellow sunshine and admire the green of leaves and listen to the bees collecting pollen and nectar. And I try to catch this spring feeling a bread. It has the same colour combination of green and yellow. The yellow stems from the high carotenoid content of the kamut flour while pumpkin seeds adds green sprinkles in the crumb. A bit of honey remembers on the busy bees.

To fit the bread in my full weekend schedule (new garden and my bee keeper course is keeping me still busy) I opted for a overnight version with a young sourdough and “quick” poolish. As both preferments do not stand so long  I decided to increase the amount of preferment. So all Kamutflour is fermented for a longer time which increases flavour and digestibility.

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March 22nd, 2019

Whole Grain Kamut Sandwich Bread

Kamut-Vollkorntoast-23

I planned another recipe for this week. But the last roll vanished, before I could take a picture. But luckily I baked a beautiful Kamut Sandwich Bread this week, too! 

I find it always fascinating how bright the crumb of whole grain Kamut breads is. And its flavour is always delicious, sweet and nutty. As all ancient grains are a bit trying when it comes to whole grain sandwich breads, I used all tricks I learned in my struggles during the last two years: Vitamin C in form of acerola cherry juice, a bit pf physilium hulls, enzyme active bean flour and eggs help to enhance gluten network and to stabilize the crust. Another key for a stable crumb is the “ten piece methode”. For each bread the dough is formed into ten buns and then place in the baking tin. That helps to create a more even and tender crumb which does not collapse during cutting. It takes a bit more time for forming, but the effort is very well invested!

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November 25th, 2017

Kamut Rolls

Kamut-Kanten-23The flour bag with white kamut flour contained still 400g flour which had to be used. And that was the beginning of this delicious rolls. They contain some sweet starter made of spelt which I used directly from the fridge. Using a ripe starter adds a lot of flavour to a bread and is an easy way to use up leftover starter. And the complex aroma notes of the starter harmonize very well with the deep nutty flavour of the Kamut flour.

Kamut is not very complicated to use. It needs just a bit of care while kneading as it tends even more to get over kneaded then spelt. And so I kneaded it only a short time and developed the gluten network with strech and fold circles during fermenting. And you can feel how the dough build up strength while folding. Kamut is really the easiest of the ancient grains!

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November 19th, 2017

Kamut Packet

Kamut-Packerl3

After a lot of recipe development for my last course I have a lot of little flour leftovers from various ancient grains. There was for example the packet of white Kamut flour which I bought before I decided that the ancient grain workshop would be a whole grain workshop, too. And so I decided to use the last bread baking day in the museum to cut down some leftovers and baked pure kamut bread.

The bread contains about 40% whole grain flour which is mainly added to the poolish. That allows the flour to take up a lot of water. Especially Kamut is able to soak up a lot of water – at least all the batches I worked with in the last month. Anyway it is a good Idea to start with less water and add the water while kneading – just in case. The mild flaovur of the poolish fits very well to the nutty aroma of the Kamut.

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June 7th, 2014

Hot Walnut Ring with Koharsan Wheat

Feurige Walnuss-RingeThe last time I phoned my sister, she told me about a “Baguette” she ate in a cooking class some days ago. She liked the combination of hot pepper, walnuts and whole spelt flour, but the bread had a very thigh and doughy crumb. So I wrote down the recipe and promised to build a better recipe. For that I had to change nearly the whole recipe.

I take out the egg from the formula (no egg is needed in a baguette), but add a good deal more water but much less yeast. I reduced the amount of walnuts only a little bit for a better balance between bread and nut and added some chopped sweet red pepper for the good look. The amount of hot pepper should be adjusted by the personal taste, the amount of Habenero I used brings the recipe definitely to the hot side. If you want a milder version I would decrease the hot pepper and use more sweet pepper instead.

I kneaded the dough as I would knead a baguette dough and in the end I was rewarded with a soft but not sticky dough. It was easy to form some rings out of it. And after a propper fermenting and proofing time (something the original recipe omit) I was rewarded with a great aromatic bread. The Khorasan wheat, which I used instead of Spelt, gives a sweet nutty flavour to the dough which goes very well with walnuts and hot pepper. And the crumb is nicely open, especially when you consider the high amount of whole grain flour. A perfect bread to bring to a BBQ or to eat as a side with a summer salad!

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May 24th, 2014

Honey Bread with Kamut

Honigbrot mit Kamut

Old grain species like Einkorn, Emmer and Kamut enrich the diversity of bread flavours and gives us a lot of new possibilities for baking. When I thought about a theme for the ongoing  Bread Baking Day I realized that I did not bake with these grains for a long time. And so I bought Emmer, Einkorn and Kamut on my next trip to the whole food shop.

Kamut is the trade name of the Khorasan wheat. As a genetical analysis from 2006 showed that its origin lies in the fertile crescent and that it stems from a natural cross between durum wheat and Triticum polonicum. Its flour has, similar to durum flour, a creamy yellow colour and can be used similar to wheat flour.

Because kamut is rather expensivI normally mix wheat flour with kamut flour, and so I did in the bread, too. The honey I added to the dough pairs very well with the mild yoghurt flavour of my very active sourdough and the nutty nuance from the Kamut. The honey although enhance the dark crust colour while some stretch and fold cycles helps to create an open crumb.

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