Tag Archives: Spelt

January 1st, 2016

Spelt New Years Pretzel

Category Special Occasions Tags: Butter, Egg, Orange, Sahne, Spelt, Sweet starter, wheat free 18 Responses

Relaxed and in good company was our start into 2016. I hope, you landed good in the new year as well!

For a late breakfast we always have the traditional new year pretzel and for this one I did something I planed to do already for some time. I transformed the favourite sunday braid recipe to spelt flour. To increase the water binding capacity, I added a water roux and for a stronger starter, I build the dough similar to a pandoro with a first and a second dough. This enhance flavour and makes the yeasts stronger as they already have the change to adapt to the higher sugar content.

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October 2nd, 2015

Breadbaking for Beginners: Spelt, Emmer & Quak Rolls

Category Bread baking for beginners, Rolls Tags: Butter, Curd, Emmer, Honey, only with yeast, Spelt, wheat free 23 Responses

In August we spent a weekend in the beautiful Swabia. A part of my family has its roots there and I always enjoy being there. Eating some pretzels is then a “Must” of course. When we stop at a bakerie in Schwäbisch Hall, I spotted a roll made with some Emmer and Quark (Curd). But sadly the last one was already sold when it was my turn. So I bought pretzels and Briegels instead. But the idea was fixed in my head. And soon afterwards I recipe began to form in my head.

As spelt is a typical grain for Swabia, I decided to use a mix of Emmer and Spelt, which adds a nice nutty flavour to the rolls. The Quark makes it moist and if I would not know, that I added 30 % whole grain flour, I would never have guessed it.

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September 20th, 2015

Swan King Bread

Category Bread Tags: Brühstück, Butter, Buttermilch, Malz, Malzbier, Rye, Sourdough, Spelt, wheat free 48 Responses

Oliver asked me on Saturday morning if I have a recipe for a “King Ludwig Bread”. I did not know a bread with this name, but after some minutes of googling I started to suspect that it is a readymade mixture for bakeries, as so many bakeries are selling it. Some minutes later I found the manufacture of the mix and the ingredients did not sound so well in my ears: “Spelt flour, ry flour, malt, dried rye sourdough, whole spelt flour, coarse meal spelt, gluten, salt, sweet whey powder, guar flour, wheat bran, grape concentrate, ascorbic acid, enzymes”.

The breads seems to have a soft crumb what speaks against a bigger amount of rye and the brownish crumb should be due to malt and not to a lot of whole grain flour. And slowly a recipe starts to appear in my brain.

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August 2nd, 2015

Spelt Rolls with Sweet Starter

Category Rolls Tags: Spelt, Sweet starter, wheat free 11 Responses

Some weeks ago a reader asked me if it is possible to bake pure spelt rolls with sourdough. The reason for this question is a histamine intolerance and so I thought directly of using my sweet starter, as the sweet starter fits well in the “shortly riped” scheme. I feeded a part of my starter four times with spelt flour which reduces the wheat in the starter to 0,26%. If you want a pure spelt starter, you can start a starter from a spelt sourdough and some spelt flour as well.

To avoid a dry crumb (what can happen with spelt so easily) I added once again a hot soaker. Some egg yolk and fat makes the crumb more fluffy and the malt helps to deepen the flavour. But using egg yolk and malt is not necessary, if you can’t eat one or the other. Just replace the egg yolk with water. The crumb will be a little bit more dense but the rolls will be still fine. And if you are looking for wheat free recipes, there is a new tag for you: wheat free 🙂

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April 26th, 2015

Bread Baking for Beginners X: Spelt Rye Bread

Category Bread, Bread baking for beginners, hand kneaded Tags: Anfänger, Hand kneaded, only with yeast, Poolish, Rye, Spelt, wheat free 64 Responses

So here is now the promised Spelt bread. I know that many of the readers of this blog like to bake with spelt, but baking with spelt flour is a little bit more challenging then baking with wheat flour, so the recipe comes relatively late in my bread baking course.

Spelt is closely realted to wheat. But there are two thing to keep in mind when working with spelt. Flour made from spelt contains a different composition of gluten proteins which finally results in a more fragile gluten network. This makes it easy to “over knead” spelt dough, meaning that the dough is kneaded longer then it takes to obtain full gluten development which ends in breaking down the gluten network once again. Due to this fact I prefer to knead spelt dough by hand which gives me a better control then kneading with the kitchen machine. If kneading with the machine it is important to keep a close eye on the dough and testing the gluten development by the window pane test. Intervall kneading (kneading shortly with breaks in between) can be handy as well. Continue reading →

January 31st, 2015

Whole Grain Country Loaf

Category Bread, Overnight Tags: only with yeast, Pâte fermentée, Rye, Spelt, Über-Nacht, wheat free, whole grain 41 Responses

Breads with spelt are still highly requested. There was for example the question if the Country Loaf could maybe be baked without wheat and with only whole grain flour. I thought a little bit and changed some details and sent my first draft to the reader. It took some time until I could test the recipe in practice. Here I had to realize that the hot soaker would be better with more water, and so I changed the recipe accordingly. But the rest of the recipe worked as planned.

And the bread is very delicious. Because it is whole grain the oven spring is a bit weaker, and the crumb is denser, but due to the soaker it stays fresh the whole week! The Pâte fermentée makes the flavour mild but complex and the long cold proof in the fridge even improves the aroma. It is really could when there are recipe questions to recipe question :-D!

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January 18th, 2015

Pure Spelt

Category Bread, hand kneaded Tags: Brühstück, Cold Autolyse, Hand kneaded, Poolish, Spelt, wheat free 48 Responses

A reader asked for pure spelt recipe here on the blog and I realized that there a only few and that recipes without sourdough are even fewer. And so I baked a pure spelt bread last weekend. It is a light bread with a little bit whole spelt flour, a poolish and a long rise to enhance the flavour. I put the whole spelt floor into the poolish, so it had enough time to soak properly. Another part of the flour I mixed with water and placed it overnight in the fridge. The next morning I mixed the autolysed dough together with the poolish and a hot soaker. The hot soaker prevents the dough from baking dry, an often occurring problem with pure spelt bread.

The bread turned out to be a highlight: Great oven spring, crisp crust, soft crumb and a fantastic flavour.

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October 26th, 2014

Wheat Spelt Baguette

Category hand kneaded Tags: Baguette, Hand kneaded, Poolish, Sourdough, Spelt, Wheat No Responses

This Weekend I planed to bake the Baguettes which Sara posted on her Blog. But when I mixed the poolish I ran out of white flour. It was already late evening, it was cold and raining and I did not want to leave home again to run to the supermarket. Instead I checked what was left: rye flour was no alternative, but white spelt flour and a darker wheat flour was looking very good. And because the planed recipe was now out of discussion I mixed a bigger batch sourdough with the darker wheat flour and made an autolysis dough with the spelt flour.

The next morning I kneaded the dough by hand and let it rise for the hours at room temperature with some folds in between. Then we left home to buy and plant some apple trees with my spouses parents. When we came home late afternoon I heated the oven and formed the dough to baguettes. When I pulled the loaves from the oven they smelled divined. So we ate one while still warm. And it tasted as good as it smelled. Crunchy crust, middle open crumb and a deep, complex flavour due to the two preferments and the cold fermentation. A unplanned bread which turned into a favourite!

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August 17th, 2014

Double Bake

Category Bread Tags: Doppelback, Sourdough, Spelt 15 Responses

I love breads with a soft crumb and a crisp crust. And there are two possibilities to archive a thick, crunchy crust: You can either bake the bread with falling heat or you use the trick of “double baking”. For double baking you let the bread cool down after the first round of baking and then put it back into the oven. This yields a very aromatic, crisp crust.

For this wheat and spelt bread I used both methods. First I baked the loaves with falling heat, then I let them cool down over night. The next morning I put them back into the oven for about 15 min. That created a bread with a perfectly crisp crust!

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June 27th, 2014

Light Spelt Bread

Category Bread, hand kneaded Tags: Hand kneaded, Poolish, Sourdough, Spelt, wheat free 43 Responses

With the new oven I had to bake a bread immediately. I didn’t have a pure spelt bread for some time and so I decided that spelt bread should be the first bread baked in the new oven! With some sourdough and poolish for a good, complex flavour and a hot soaker to keep it moist.

But really existing was the moment when I placed the bread in the oven. I turned the oven to “Hydrobake”, which is the oven programm that traps the steam inside and throw some ice cubes inside to create some more steam. And then I sat in front of the oven and watch the bread rise the same way like other people would watch a thriller. The oven spring was indeed nicer then in my old oven. But the most impressing thing is the great colour and shine of the crumb which shows the importance of steam for a the maillard reaction.

I’m really happy with the new oven. And I’m happy with the bread as well. It tastes great, has a nice open crumb and a very crisp crust! It tastes so good, that I had no change to freeze one loaf because we it so fastly!

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