Tag Archives: Spelt

April 28th, 2014

Aggertaler

Category Bread Tags: Hand kneaded, Sourdough, Spelt, Wheat 4 Responses

Each morning when I take the train to cologne, I look through the window to see the beauty of our little river agger and its valley (Aggertal). An attentive Observer can see Great Crested Grebe dancing their mating dance, discover a doe with its fawn, different kinds of geese and sometime even a hare. And I love to see small waft of mist over the water, enlighten by the rising sun. And sometimes I wish I could ask the train driver to stop so I could enjoy a view a little longer.

And so this bread is a little homage to my home valley, with my very active sourdough starter, flour from the local mill and water which is (of course) from a side river of the agger. It catches the essence of home between its crispy crust and airy crumb!

Continue reading →

April 12th, 2014

Birthday Bread

Category Bread Tags: Brot couture, Deko, Malz, Rye, Spelt, Wheat No Responses

I baked a decorated loaf once again, this time as part of a present for my boyfriends grandmother (as I told before there is a birthday each week in April). But instead of using my normal recipe and shape I decided to go for something new. And so used another recipe and shaped the bread with a small loaf in the middle, surrounded by a poppy seed covered braid and with a little rose on the seam where the ends of the braid meets.

And because I can not cut into a present, I doubled the recipe and baked a “normal” loaf as well. I cut it when it was just cooled and I was in love with its fine crumb and crunchy crust in a moment. A very delicious bread!

Continue reading →

March 9th, 2014

Country loaf

Category Bread Tags: only with yeast, Pâte fermentée, Rye, Spelt, Über-Nacht, Wheat 44 Responses

Somedays ago I got a mail from a reader, asking me to help her to transform a recipe so she could proof the loaves in the fridge overnight. The main point to keep in mind when you plan to proof a bread in the fridge is that the amount of fresh yeast should be below 1%. The other ingredients can stay the same. And so the recipe was transformed quickly. But my creative juice were just flowing and so I sent her another variation which use a preferment as well. And I liked the recipe so much that I decided to bake it myself, too.

And the bread turned out very well, too: A good ovenspring and a mild aromatic taste due to preferment and the long, cold proof. I’m really happy that Alexandra asked for a recipe!

Continue reading →

February 16th, 2014

Weekend Rolls

Category hand kneaded, Overnight, Rolls Tags: Hand kneaded, Spelt, Sweet starter, Über-Nacht, Wheat 22 Responses

After all the sweet posts something hearty is needed here on the Blog!

At the moment I bake a lot of bread using my sweet starter because I’m still in love with my not sour sourdough. I hope it is not getting boring for you. But the sweet starter allows me even to make dough which can rise in the fridge for 24 hours or longer without degrading the gluten or getting to sour. I used a cold fermented dough already for this baguettes. My weekend rolls work the same way, the dough rise in the cold for 12 to 36 hours and whenever I need rolls on the weekend I take some dough out and bake them freshly. The recipe will yield 10 Rolls, but the recipe can easily be doubled. A perfect recipe for a lazy weekend!

Continue reading →

January 23rd, 2014

Spelt Poppy Seed Cookies

Category Cake & Pastry Tags: Poppy seeds, Spelt, wheat free, whole grain 13 Responses

Sometimes I need a little bit of sweet in the afternoon to refill my energy reserve. Especially on long workdays I have the longing for a cookie to accompany my cup of coffee to overcome my afternoon slump. And I like it most when the little treat in my lunchbox is then a homemade sweet, preferable made with whole grain.

This week I bake cookies with whole spelt flour and grounded poppy seeds, an idea I had in my mind since I baked the Mohnkipferln. Using whole cane sugar adds a delicious caramel note to the cookies while pinch of salt make the taste nicely round. A great cookie for a little break!

Continue reading →

January 11th, 2014

Three Grain Burger Buns

Category Rolls Tags: Buckwheat, lactose free, Spelt, Wheat 9 Responses

I love homemade (vegetarian) Burger. And when really everything – from burger patty to the bun – is made by myself, it did not longer deserve the term “fast food”.

To push this dish to the healthy side, I bake the buns this time with 50% whole grain flour. The whole grain flour is a mixture of self milled spelt, wheat and buckwheat. This is not only healthy but it adds a deep nutty flavour to the buns as well. The only problem when baking with whole grain flour is that they tend to get dense and dry. To prevent this I made a hot soaker with some of whole grain flour and used the rest for autolysis so the bran could absorb as much water as possible.Adding some sourdough starter from the fridge as well as some malt helps to create round flavour.

The buns were great, with a soft and tender crumb, and together with some lentil cauliflower patties and a lot of lettuce and tomatoes they were a delicious dinner. And the leftover buns tasted good as breakfast roll with some honey or marmalade, too!

Continue reading →

December 27th, 2013

Country bread with sweet starter

Category Bread, Bread Baking Day Tags: BBD, Sourdough, Spelt, Sweet starter 40 Responses

I love to bake Pandoro, but in the busy Christmas time I do not always find the time to prepare the time consuming Sweet Starter. But this year I had enough time for it during the holidays. A Sweet Starter is an extremly active sourdough which is prepared by feeding a sourdough every four hours and keeping it on 30°C. This shifts the sourdough to the yeasty side and creates a sweet tasting sourdough with only hints of yoghurt flavour. And it makes the starter very strong, and so my starter was finally able to double its size in two hours. Such an active starter is a very nice thing and so I decided to increase the amount during feeding until I could use a part of it to start a preferment for a bread. I mixed the preferment in the morning and after four hours the sourdough more then tripled it size and was ready to use. And so I mixed a dough, fermeted it for three hours and then I proofed the shaped loaves overnight in the fridge.

Continue reading →

October 4th, 2013

Spelt Pretzel Rolls

Category Rolls Tags: lye pretzels, only with yeast, Pâte fermentée, Spelt, wheat free 26 Responses

Annette asked at the recipe for Ulmer Spatzen if she could use spelt flour instead of wheat flour for the rolls. I told her that it should be fine to bake the rolls with spelt. Parallel my brain started to work. I was dreaming about pretzels already for quite some time, so baking a spelt pretzel roll sounds great for me.

At the end I made a new recipe, because I decided that I would rather use a pâte fermentée and hot soaker to prevent the pretzel rolls from getting dry, something that can happen easily when baking with spelt flour.

Due to the soaker the rolls has the perfect crumb, dense but soft and not dry at all. A perfect pretzel roll!

Continue reading →

September 14th, 2013

SpeWaBu

Category Bread Tags: Buttermilch, Honey, only with yeast, Pâte fermentée, Spelt, Walnuss, wheat free 22 Responses

As soon as the temperature drops below 20°C, I feel the urge to bake whole grain breads. And a bread with nuts seems to fit perfectly to the season. I picked whole spelt flour, walnuts and buttermilk – a favourite combination for bread. And while I was thinking about a Name I suddenly hat to think about the story of Robbi, Tobbi and the FlieWaTüüt. The FlieWaTüüt in the book was called so, because it could fly (german: FLIEgen), it could swim on the Water, and drive like a car (the Tüüt was the sound of its horn). And with this story in mind I called the bread SpeWaBu (Spelt, Walnut, Buttermilk).

It is a bread that can convince even people who do not like spelt or whole grain so much. It stays moist due to a hot soaker and the buttermilk helps to form a soft and surprisingly fluffy crumb. It has a mild aromatic taste which pairs well with cheese or honey.

Continue reading →

August 21st, 2013

Crescents with Lievito madre

Category Overnight, Rolls Tags: Lievito madre, Pâte fermentée, Spelt, Über-Nacht, Water roux 21 Responses

Since my childhood I love to eat sweet “Hörnchen” for breakfast. But when I try to let the buttery buns rise over night in the fridge I run into a problem. Putting a dough with a high butter content in the fridge makes the butter solid. The solid butter inhibit the prober rise of the dough and this leads to a reduced volume.

Changing butter to a mild sunflower seed oil helped a lot. Similar to the Burger buns I baked two weeks ago, this recipe works with a relative high amount of oil, which makes the crumb soft and fluffy. The taste is different from my standard recipe, missing the prominent butter flavour. But the mild taste of the oil allows the complex flavours of the preferments shine through. And so are this delicious Hörnchen a great alternative for my favourite breakfast!

Continue reading →