Bread - What are you baking today…..
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Bread for this week- experimentally 100% spelt, white and whole, even including the starter. Tastes fine though I doubt I’d be able to tell a difference from wheat if pressed. Also as organic spelt flour is about twice the cost of wheat, not sure I’ll repeat this one all that often.
Still fun to try. I’ll post the details in a day or two if anyone wants to try it. Calling it the devil’s loaves, as I used exactly 666 g of water (66%) for hydration! -
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Those look phenomenal @Giles, you are baking some great Bread.
Next 2 loaves get and I and an H scored in them.
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Working on some more dutch oven sourdough. I really need a proofing basket, and Im learning that I need to cut deeper into them to get a good line. It never really works out right.
Pretty happy with that crumb though
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I’ve been using glass bowls, ceramic bowls, colanders, whatever is to hand and about the right shape and side. Check a towel and some flour in and it works a treat.
That being said my newly arrived bannetons were used this morning.
The spelt loaf, from spelt starter was over-proofed. I’m a bugger for pushing the envelope, but I hate the idea of under-proofing. A decent amount of surface tension contributed to a bit of oven spring though. Happy enough, and it tasted good.
A wholewheat loaf as well this morning. These were proofed in mixing bowls…
This was super tasty bread. My rye starter has developed for weeks now and the taste it imparts to bread is getting better and better.
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@neph93 What did you think of working with spelt vs wheat?
@Chap Yours looks great!
Here's my 100% spelt recipe. I couldn't find a whole lot about working exclusively with spelt, it seems like most recipes I could find used it in the minority. There are a few whole spelt recipes lurking on the 'net, but none of them looked like quite what I was looking for or interested in. All I could gather was that the gluten is more "delicate" (whatever that means) and the dough should be treated more gently, and a lower hydration should be used, I saw about 3/4 of what you'd use for wheat. I noticed my spelt vs wheat starter was alot more liquid with the same proportion of ingredients at 100% hydration. Thus, I did less folding and less vigorously and a much lower hydration than I'd normally do. Anyway, here is what I did.
Total:
900 g white spelt (90%)
100 g whole spelt (10%)
666! g water (66.6%)
20 g salt
Levain:
50 g spelt starter
50 g white spelt
50 g whole spelt
100 g water
Dough:
850 g white spelt
50 g whole spelt
566 g water
20 g salt
Target temp: 78 F.
I mixed the levain first. 3.5 hours later I mixed the dough, minus salt to autolyze. 1.5 hours later I added the levain and salt to the dough, and mixed primarily by pinching. After mixed, I did 4 hours of bulk fermentation with 3 folds spaced at 30 minutes in the first 1.5 hours. After bulk, I divided and let rest on a spelt floured counter for 30 minutes before shaping. Shaped, and retarded in the fridge overnight.
After bulk, nice bubbles and looks like a much higher hydration.
After overnight retard.
The next day:
After preheating at 500 F, I baked for 20 minutes with steam at 500 F, and then 25 additional minutes at 450 F. First loaf went into the oven at 25.5 hours after I mixed the levain.
Post bake, flatter than usual but crumb looks fine.
Results were fine, I think good crumb however it was flatter than my normal loaves. The mix looked too dry at first, but got a lot wetter looking through bulk. At the end it looked like my normal wheat loaves at 85%+ hydration. Shaping was difficult, it was very wet and sticky, and hard to get much tension at all. I'm not sure if I might have overworked it, or maybe underworked it?
Tasty, but since organic spelt flour is twice as expensive as wheat (probably ~$2.50-3.00USD/Lb) and there wasn't much difference in the end as far as flavor, I don't know that I'll be trying to improve or experiment with it much. Photos to come… -
@neph93 What did you think of working with spelt vs wheat?
I enjoyed it. The starter took a while to get going and it wasn't quite as badass a spelt loaf as your recipe, there was a solid portion of strong white bread flower in there too. But I found the same thing as with working with other heritage corn types, it starts off a little loose and difficult, but stiffens quickly after the first folding and becomes fun to work with. It was mostly for shits and giggles, but both the process and the result were pleasing. I'll probably do it again.
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Made a potato bread today, reduced the flour, boiled a large potato, mashed it, used 3/4 cup of it, used the potato water. Once sliced I will photo it.
