Tag: spelt

Restocking The Wheat Berries

Rogue de Bordeaux recently came back into stock, so it was time for another order of wheat berries from Breadtopia. I ordered two bags of that variety because it has a wonderful rich smell and taste, a five pound bag wouldn’t last long.

Delivering a heavy package from Iowa to the Pacific Northwest — freight isn’t cheap. I used that as excuse to splurge on some of the not-inexpensive varieties such as the Kamut and the Durum. I’ve been meaning to bake this Whole Spelt Sourdough Bread from the Breadtopia site so Spelt went into the shopping cart as well.

Rounding out the order was a bag of Rye, a bag of Red Fife, and a bag of Yecora Rojo. All of that will join the Turkey Red, Sonora White, and other smaller quantities of berries already in the pantry. The weekly sandwich loaves are usually one of Red Fife / Yecora Rojo / Turkey Red / Rogue de Bordeaux, with the Yecora Rojo delivering the most consistently good results for a tightly crumbed and elastic slice of bread.

I’d love to be able to buy these closer to home, but the relatively local places don’t sell many varieties of berries, they mostly just sell flours. I’m little surprised they don’t also bag and distribute the berries, I’m assuming it’s a value-add thing for the mill.

This is the first post with the new laptop. This blog and the previous title (CheapSeatEats) have now seen at least two other laptops come and go, maybe three. There were a few new things to learn with handling and resizing photos but it’s really nice not having to wait for things to spin up so that I can get on with the writing. I’ll be interested to see what the photos look like when viewed from the web. I cropped to the same size as usual and it looks grainy in the preview, so that may need some attention later on.

I’ve also read that Kamut is super hard and may initially cause the Mockmill 200 to discharge some millstone into the flour. We’ll see how that goes.

Now to figure out where it’s all going to live in the pantry.

Ciabatta With Spelt

A Ciabatta. I substituted out 20% of the bread flour and replaced it with Spelt. For reference, the finished bread is about 12″ across:

190527 spelt ciabatta

I started baking with Spelt in 2018. Those blog posts are now gone as part of the move to the new site. For background, Spelt breads will hold air bubbles but the structure Spelt provides is very fragile and it requires gentle working and handling to avoid degassing.

The Recipe and Process: 

400 grams KA bread flour, 100 grams Spelt flour (Bob’s Red Mill), 360 grams water (72% hydration), 15 grams olive oil (3%), 10 grams kosher salt (2%), 1/2 teaspoon instant yeast. That’s less than half the yeast that I’d use if I planned to bake the bread a couple of hours after mixing, but I had other ideas.

The dough was mixed for eight minutes, covered, and allowed to proof for around 4 hours. I then did a two “stretch and folds”, shaped the dough into a ball, and allowed the dough to proof  on a parchment covered pizza peel for another two hours. (I covered the dough with an inverted large bowl during the 2nd rise.)

For baking: The oven and baking stone were preheated to 425F for 30 minutes. I added 1 cup of water to a sheet tray and placed it on the bottom shelf. When the water in the sheet tray was steaming I slid the parchment and dough from the peel onto the baking stone. Total bake time was 35 minutes. (At 30 minutes the internal temperature was only 192F, so I gave it another 5 minutes.)

Postmortem Thoughts:

From Bakerpedia:

Baked goods made with spelt flour will be more dense and heavy than those from wheat flour.

Spelt flour has a much higher water absorption capacity, giving a somewhat smaller loaf volume than common wheat flour.

Which is basically describes the finished loaf. While proofing the dough spread more “out” than “up”, and there wasn’t much oven spring, even though I’d slashed the loaf prior to baking and provided steam in the oven. The crumb wasn’t “tight” but it wasn’t “holey and rustic” either.

Spelt provides a nice nutty taste, and some je ne sais quoi, which is part of the reason I chose to include it in a same-day preparation. I also like Spelt because it tastes less refined and sugary than regular bread flour.

Overall it was a pleasant loaf. I sliced it thinly so that each piece wasn’t heavy and we served it with good butter. It didn’t last even half-way through dinner.