Tag Archives: wheat free

February 3rd, 2018

Spelt Sandwich Bread (60% Whole Grain)

Category Bread Tags: Spelt, Sweet Starter, wheat free, whole grain 34 Responses

Step for Step I move nearer to my whole grain sandwich bread with a great amount of ancient grain. After the variant of with 30% whole emmer flour and white wheat flour worked so well, I tried this time a spelt sandwich bread with 60% whole grain. I decided to use a whole egg instead of egg yolk, as the egg white helps to stabilize the crumb. The rose hip powder adds vitamine C which enhances the gluten network. Instead of rose hip powder you can use acerola cherry juice as well. A well developed gluten network is one key to a fluffy bread with a good volume. Butter helps to keep the crump tender.

I am very happy with the result. The flavour is nutty and mild, the crumb as fluffy as a good sandwhich bread should be. The next step is adding Emmer to the mixture…

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January 28th, 2018

Whole Spelt Brioche

Category Rolls Tags: Butter, Egg, Orange, Spelt, Sweet starter, wheat free, whole grain 14 Responses

January was extraordinary dark this year. I miss the sun and feel that without I lack creativity. Yesterday, finally, we had a sunny day and so we spent a day outside. Coming home my mind happily mingled different ideas I had recently to bake a whole grain brioche.

As adding some rose hip powered helped me to archive a better gluten structure in this bread I decided to test its power in a whole spelt variant of brioche. With some sweet starter for flavour and some finely grated orange peel to break the slight bitterness of whole grain, I kneaded a dough containing a good amount of egg and butter. Kneading a brioche dough is always thrilling. As soon as the butter is added to the mixture, it turns in a sloppy mess. This happens with wheat brioche dough as well, so do not panic. Just keep kneading. The dough needs time until it starts to come together once again, but it will. As spelt sensitive to overkneading, it is advisable to keep an eye on gluten development . Nevertheless aim for full gluten development. Then you will be rewarded with a delightful brioche with a tender crumb. The flavour is rich and buttery, with delicious orange notes. For me, it is an enrichment of my Sunday morning breakfast, especially in combination with my favourite orange jam!

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January 20th, 2018

Three Grainy

Category Overnight, Rolls Tags: Emmer, only with yeast, overnight, Rye, Spelt, wheat free 14 Responses

I like relaxed baking on weekend mornings. And so I often knead a dough in the evening and put it in the fridge to ferment over night while I dream sweetly. The next morning all I have to do is forming rolls, letting them rise a bit and placing them in the oven.

Following this principles I created the recipe for the Three Grainy Rolls during Christmas holidays. They are easy to make and so perfect for lazy holiday mornings. The dough contains three different grains: spelt, emmer and rye. This adds a deepness to the flavour which is enhanced by the cold fermentation in the fridge. Adding a bit of sourdough is optional, the recipe works well with out but with sourdough is flavour is even more enhanced.

Due to the butter in the dough the rolls have a fluffy crump which is perfect for breakfast. I love them most with a good amount honey!

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November 25th, 2017

Kamut Rolls

Category Bread Tags: Flohsamenschale, Kamut, wheat free 16 Responses

The 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

Category Bread Tags: Kamut, only with yeast, Poolish, wheat free 7 Responses

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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September 17th, 2017

Autumn Bread

Category Bread Tags: Nuts, psyllium, Rye, Sourdough, Spelt, Sweet starter, Walnuss, wheat free, wood fired oven 10 Responses

After a mainly cold and rainy summer, the weather turned for some days just when school started. But this was just the last glimpse of summer we got. With the beginning of September it changed again and since then we have typical autumn weather – cold, sometimes rain, sometimes sun. When I drive to work I can see the valley filled with mist– it looks like little clouds snuggling into their beds before sun is waking them for the day. For me autumn is always the season to bake nut breads. And so I bake not only the dark spelt, nut & fruit in the wood fired oven last week, but as well a light spelt bread with hazelnuts and walnuts.

A deep flavour is archived by the combination of a spelt sourdough, a rye sourdough and a sweet starter. And due to the three lively sourdough adding yeast is theoretically not necessary. But as the community oven is not waiting for anyone I used a tiny bit of commercial yeast to keep fermentation well controlled and well fitted in the time schedule. And so et the end everything worked as planned: The oven spring was strong, the crust turned out crunchy and the crumb was fluffy. A perfect day for calm autumn days.

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September 10th, 2017

Spelt, Nut & Fruit

Category Bread Tags: Cranberries, Einkorn, Nuts, Rübenkraut, Spelt, Walnuss, wheat free, whole grain 40 Responses

As soon as the temperature drops I start longing for hearty whole grain breads. Blackbread would satisfy all my cravings but I have troubles with the amount of rye. It can cause me stomach ache and so I thought about another alternative. For the monthly bread baking day in the wood fired oven I came up with two nutty spelt breads. One was made with white flour (Recipe will follow), the other is made with cracked spelt and mixture of walnuts, hazelnuts and cranberries. As the cracked spelt is soaked overnight, it helps to keep the bread perfectly moist. For the right flavour I used molasses and some spelt sourdough which balanced each other perfectly. Kneading is done in intervals to protect the fragile gluten of spelt and einkorn. This works like a charm and at the end I had a soft but good to handle dough. Continue reading →

August 23rd, 2017

Spelt Goldknödel

Category Cake & Pastry Tags: Butter, Cream, Flohsamenschale, Nuts, Spelt, Sweet starter, wheat free, wood fired oven 17 Responses

I posted our family favourite cake already some years ago here in the blog. When we have to choose between torte and goldknödel on a birthday celebration, all of us will take a piece of the goldknödel. It is THIS kind of favourite of extended family!

The cake stems from the Transylvanian and Hungarian part of family heritage and is all by it self a rather simple pastry. It is made from a sweet yeast dough which is formed into small balls and coated with warm butter and a mixture of grounded nuts and sugar. While baking in a kugelhopf pan the sugar caramelize and adds another delicious flavour to the aroma of nuts and butter.

A Kugelhopf pan is mandatory for this cake. Wen the Teflon coat of my – rather cheep – pan started to fall apart after ten years of using I decided that I need something longer lasting. And so I bought an ancient brass kugelhopf pan. It has very good baking qualities, is rather everlasting and looks beautiful on my kitchen wall when not in use.

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August 14th, 2017

Spelt Potato Bread

Category Bread Tags: Buttermilch, Lieblingsbrot, only with yeast, Spelt, wheat free, wood fired oven 48 Responses

I was making dessert in my summer warm kitchen and when whipping cream the cream turned nearly instantly to butter. Luckily it was still unsweetened and so I took the butter clumps out to wash them and use them as delicious homemade butter. The buttermilk was at this point not fermented, so I decided to inoculate it with some creme fraice from the fridge, thinking: if you can use buttermilk to inoculated cream for creme fraiche it will work the other way round, too. And it did! After 24 hours the buttermilk was thick and tasted sour.

But what should I do with this tiny amount? Making bread with buttermilk is always great and so I decided to put it into the dough I was kneading for the bread baking in the wood fired oven in the local museum.

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June 16th, 2017

Potato Rye Bread

Category Bread Tags: Caraway, coriander, fennel, Poolish, Potatoes, Rye, Sourdough, wheat free 38 Responses

Already for some time I had the idea of a mild aromatic pure rye bread in my mind. But I need – as everyone knows – someone to share breads with high percentage. A big family get together for which I volunteered to bake all bread needed was the chance to bring my idea of this bread to life.

My wild sourdough was build in to stages to ensure both mild flavour and good strength to rise the loaf. But at the moment my sourdough is a bit to wild and the second stage doubled its volume after just one hour. That was to short to develop enough lactic acid and other flavour components. And so I placed the bowl at a cooler spot and let it ripe for another two hours until the flavour of the sourdough was right. But the amazing power of this sourdough was unbroken. After not even one hour(instead of the normal two) the loaf peaked over the rim of the proofing basket.

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