STIR THE POTS

Rustic in nature, but rye in demeanor Rustikale Brötchen

Since getting my baguettes right, I decided to concentrate my efforts on some German rye and whole grain loaves. Honestly, there have been noticeable improvement in my endeavors so far. My second (or maybe it was my fifth!) attempt at a Volkornbrot was tasty. But honestly, it came out with a blown top. I dunno what that effect is called, but it didn't stop me from garnishing this toothy loaf with cheese and sausages.

Point being????? Fellow culinary artistes, arrivistes, never-mind good old fashion & new fashion bakers, yee should not be  dissuaded. No, yee shan't. Or shouldn't!

Myself, I flipped through my multitude of recipes in books, spreadsheets and found a loaf that sounded monolithic - aka easy to make. Then preparing the sauer that proofed at least 18 hours for the following day's bake, dropping zeroes from final numbers on the PDF file found on the website of Böcker sauerteig, I played it safe until feeling safe by going for a larger percentage of rye.

Point being????? What I'm suggesting below is a recipe that uses 70 percent wheat to 30 percent rye sort of a country loaf, and it could be turned into Brötchen rather than the huge three pounder I made here! The verdict, quick and easy, and good with some leberwurst I got from my butcher!

Point being??? Enjoy!

 

Rustikale Brötchen

1-stufige Sauerteigführung mit    Reinzucht-Sauerteig

(für 10 kg Gesamt-Mehlmenge berechnet)
30% Roggenmehl - 70% Weizenmehl 550

Sauerteig: 0,120 kg Anstellgut*
1,200 kg Roggenmehl Teigausbeute:  180 (ca.)
    0,960 l Wasser                  Teigtemperatur:  28°C
    2,280 kg Sauerteig               Stehzeit:  18 Stunden
*
Anstellgut = BÖCKER Reinzucht-Sauerteig oder Betriebs-Sauerteig, mit BÖCKER Reinzucht-Sauerteig gestartet

Brötchenteig: 2,160 kg Sauerteig
1,800 kg Roggenmehl
7,000 kg Weizenmehl 550 Teigknetung:
0,280 kg Brötchen-Backmittel Hubkneter: 1+4 Minuten
5,540 l Wasser (ca.) Spiralkneter: 1+3 Minuten
0,200 kg Salz Teigausbeute:  165 (ca.)
    0,400 kg Hefe                      Teigtemperatur:  26°C
    17,380 kg Brötchenteig            Teigruhe:  10 Minuten

Ballengare:   10 Minuten
Ballengewicht:   1700 - 1800 g

Nach der Ballengare Teig abpressen und nur teilen. Leicht mit Roggenmehl besieben.

Gärzeit:   40 Minuten (ca)
Backtemperatur:   230 - 240°C
Backzeit:   20 - 25 Minuten
   leicht Schwaden geben

I adjusted my yeast to only 15g, it seemed like too much

You'll notice I just crossed off the zero's and went ahead and made this dough, it's suggested by Dieter Buschmann to make  Brötchen at about 60grams.

Pour manger une baguette de "Monge"

Where do you get a decent baguette like the famous Eric Kayser's  at 8 Rue Monge, with its egg shell crust and porous white mie that symbolize the pain quotidian of France. Quite often those crisp pointed ends are munched off before they make it home! It's been a while since I made a decent baguette, probably not since school. Whatever the case when I go back and try to make a baguette, they seem so simple to make. But if not careful and paying attention to detail which is often my lazy baking way, you could come up with a dud.

A lot of bread blogs like Jane at au levain have stories about her baguette travails and victories. So does Nils, whose version I have been replicating, as with many of his breads. Or try Susan at wild yeast who you can't go wrong with for all her breads, baguette's included. If you're going whole grain crazy now or feeling like a 100 percent rye, it's not a bad thing to go back to the baguette, especially for your cafe au lait and some jambon et fromage, porqoui pas? Here is my dejeuner, croustillant et pret pour un peau de beurre et confiture! If you don't read French, no worries, just figure it's an expression for a lovely treat

.

Requiem for a tired levain or fruity for rye.

I just got an order of rye from from Bob's Red Mill, but as usual I was depending on nearly starved stock  levain to make my dream loaves rise. It's not so easy, and my lazy-baker ways, as well as the deeply bad planning that go with them, made for some tired bread. When am I going to learn? As the sages of ancient kitchens might say... whatever. Thing is to get up and try again. Soooo... playing dutiful son following a failure, I gathered both my rye and my white levains and fed them best I could. Though famished, they could still bubble and burp. My goal was to remake a loaf of rye with raisins and cranberries.

The first attempt was with a dormant rye levain that I hadn't fed for a good two weeks.  With a short cycle of about eight hours between the feed and an impatient baker (moi!), I commenced making the dough, gave it an hour to proof and stuck it in the fridge. Returning home later in the evening, I removed the dough, and shaped it into a loaf pan. It looked sluggish and a bit more like clay, which could only be attributed to the rather tired levain not having sufficient nutrients or time to re-awaken. So I decided let it sit out till morning wake up in the dark hours of dawn and bake it, cross my fingers and hope for the best!

Even with good intentions, I found the dark rye dough to be a bit like hard tack with sweet fruit. So instead of using the dark, I substituted white rye. In the end, observing was my primary goal, whatever the color of this batch of rye. And so I made the dough late at night, decided not to retard it, and since my hometown (Queens, New York) was experiencing winter temperatures, I decided to just leave the dough on a long proof for approximately five hours, then wake up to shape and bake. To my surprise after letting it sit overnight, the dough didn't over-proof. It was really nicely rounded and had movement. And with just a bit of shaping  it only needed an hour to rise and... voila (or in Emeril's vocabulary... "bam!"), in and out of the oven and my blessed baby came out like a beautiful fruited rye! So what is the moral of the story? Feed your levain and observe all your steps. Don't be a lazy son of a gun baker like me!

Raisin-Cranberry white rye

Makes a loaf of around 750g

Levain
first feed: 17g flour
(I used straight white, you could use dark rye I think or even whole wheat to give a different profile?)
17 g water
9g Starter

second feed:
43g flour
43g water
43g Starter

Dough:
130 g Wheat flour
234 White rye
200g Water
8 g   Salt
42g Raisins
42gCranberries

Feed your levain, I give mine two feeds, once in the morning and then in the evening before the bake. Or I feed a big batch of stock levain and then bake like mad!
You can proceed with this dough either by hand or machine, try the Dan Lepard method or even Jim Lahey if you decide to do a long overnight proof like I did? I soaked the fruits as well and strained them before adding them to the dough.

Happy baking!

Janedo's Light rye like Paul Nury

Having a levain that is alive and well is a "good thing", as Martha would say!  Today I used techniques from several sources, but was especially inspired by Janedo at au levain, who recently wrote about  baguettes,on how to maintain a levain...etc, this lady knows baking. All good if you're not so lazy like me, but I am starting to follow some of her good advice, keeping my levain fed even though the poor blob is in my fridge in a dormant state, hasn't been fed in over a week and has just a bit of hooch on top, no matter I had to make this bread.

I just took a spoon out from the frigid mass and fed it a couple times, were in business! With my October sort of busy, baking has been relegated to the the back burner so to speak, so I go on guerrilla missions during breaks from work or on the weekend to get my pain quotidien! Jane has this particular loaf which I scoped out at the Fresh Loaf comes out of Dan Leaders Local breads, with some adaptions from Jane and my own use of my 100% hydrated and under maintained levain. I followed Janes formula to the teeth, well not so close, I did fold, retarded overnight, then let the dough warm up after about 2-3 hours, formed it loosley with the seam down in a couche and proofed another hour and plof into a 425 F pre-heated creuset like Jim Lahey method. Wow! What a loaf, light and beautiful crust, can't wait to cut into it and give it something like cheese or a saucisson!

Jane's Light rye like Nury

First feeding: 12-15 hours

13g flour                        (Jane uses 3/4 white- 1/4 rye in her feed)

13g water

7g starter

Second feeding:12-15 hours

33g Flour

33g water

33g Starter

Dough:

100g Levain

385g bread flour

100g rye

400g water

10g salt

Make starter, I do two feeds according to my buddy Mister Bethesda himself, Mick!

Put the flour and water into a mixing bowl, combine till just incorporated into a rough dough. I even let myself follow Janes 30 minute autolyse.  Then add in salt, starter and continue to mix.  The dough is wet but will come together. Though it is hydrated, it's not as loose as I thought it would be. My dough came together like a nice ball.i didn't have to add extra flour, I guess it all depends on the flour, water and temperature of your kitchen and ingredients?

Jane suggests putting it in an oiled bowl,( I never do).Rest one hour, fold, rest an hour, fold, rise another 2 hours, then in the fridge over night.

The next day, pull the dough out,I let the dough sit for 2 hours or more and fored into a rough boule. Cover and let rise about 1-2 or 3 hours depending on the condition and strength of your levain.

Preheat at 230°C- 445 F°, steam the oven lots, in goes the bread. Turn the oven down to 210°C 410 F° I baked for 35-40 minutes ( As well I used a creuset, 30 minutes with top and then the rest of the time off until nicely browned!)

I didn't score the loaf, just put the seam side up, wow tasty too! Went with a chicken salad that was a knock off of a Waldorf salad.

Thanks Jane!

If I were baking for a reformer, I would bake a Süpke brot!

My world day bread effort, Luther bread! (Like Herr Süpke)

Nils, that ever inspirational baker from Aachen, who has really helped my efforts and kindergarten steps to baking good German bread, has once again steered my attention to a particular baker's autumnal loaf. On one of his last posts he had a link to a particular Thuringian baker named Süpke. Herr Süpke made a loaf of "Luther bread," as he called it, a nod towards Martin Luther the Protestant leader. Herr Süpke found that the Halloween traditions imported from America didn't merit this loaf and instead honored the Protestant leader whom he admires. This bread is a harvest bread perfumed with autumnal flavors of apples, onions and earthy potatoes. For World Bread Day, this is my version in which I added sauerteig. And I will change the name to identify it as my hope for our own reformer here in the USA, Barack Obama, our Presidential hopeful candidate. I hope Herr Süpke would let me induldge, and even give me some pointers on some the fine looking breads he shares on his blog!

Pain Bâloise

So often my schedule interferes with one of life's great pleasures for me, baking. Either I can't find time to schedule for bread baking days or fail to enter one of the growing number of daring baking events sponsored by other bloggers.  Blame it on the  whacked-out hours of a working chef. Take this week. Checking out a recent post by NIls, he informed me of a bake-off that was, odd as it seems, close to home; namely a Swiss National Day Bake Event sponsored by Zorra.

Last summer at this time, I landed in Switzerland to visit my sister Rachel, who lives there. I remember that night so well. Though somewhat jet lagged, a bit full of beer or wine, I sat with her and the family watching the town and surrounding hills light up with fireworks, listening to gleeful cheers from my neices as the entire country celebrated all around us. And though at one point, my nephew got scared by all of the explosions, letting out a frightened howl, what I remember most was it was just such a joyous evening.

In fact, it was a great vacation, a time with family totally focused  on baking! Visiting bread museums and mills, I played the role of my sister's  official "taster," testing all the good things baked in her kitchen, from bread to  her fantastic steinofen. Well, Nil's post about the contest inspired me to whip up a Pain Bâloise,  named after a town a few minutes down the road from my sister's village. Though I failed to send in my recipe for the contest, and even if my Basel bread looks less like a Baloise than a Bürlibrot, I hope my sister will chuckle when she sees this.

Basel Bread

(based on the Basel bread on Anne's blog who got the recipe from Jan Hedh's book.)

• First Feed
• rye                      100%    18
• water                  100%    18
• starter (chef)         50%     9
• Total                              46



• Second Feed
• rye                       100%    46
• water                   100%    46
• starter (chef)        100%    46
• Total                            139



• Final Dough
• levain                 52%    139
• bread flour        100%    268
• water                 72%    193
• salt                     3%        9
•          
  
• Total flour     100%    268
•  
• Hydration   65.0%
• Levain       42.0%

I used Dan Lepard's hand mixing method of 3 short mixes at about ten seconds, with two folds at about 30 minutes and 1 hour, total rise was one hour and retarded in the refrigerator in bulk. Remove from fridge and allow the dough to come to temperature, at least an hour. Shape into small batards,(mine were rounded like boules, that is right if you want Bürli) rise about two hours and bake at 460 for 5 minutes, with steam, then lower to 400 for the final 30 - 40 minutes.

 

 

What's in a miche? Or how to Poilâne.

Returning for the first time to Paris since moving to America as a child (and not having yet become so big on bread) luck brought me walking past Poilânes bakery on  8 rue cherche midi. Giving credit where it's due, fate gave me my wife, who is not just lovely but also loves a good boutique. She brought me to the neighborhood. Thus I was able to visit the most fabled bakery in all of France, a center of that famous bread the miche.

At the time, being a recent  graduate  from FCI's  bread course, I was sure I knew something about this great French creation, at least I thought I did. It just so happened a classmate had brought back one of these cherished loaves from her own trip to France. What I remember was that her miche seemed (dare I say it?) a bit traveled! Well traveled! But biting into it, unimpressed, I decided not to dismiss generations of good bread from this fabled boulangerie. And so spotting the Poilânes outside where my wife was visiting the boutique, and then gawking at one of the two kilo miches beckoning from the bakery windows, in truth entranced, I entered the hallowed shop.

I was in heaven. Oh, the glory of that visit. They even let me step down the narrow steps to enter the baking epicenter in the basement, but " pardon,no photo's Monsieur!"  Overwhelmed, amazed, delighted (all three!) by their well guarded secrets, I considered taking a floor scraping, or even seeing if there was some levain to nab on my way out. Alas no such luck!

 

 

Back at home I started to ponder the many miche I had seen and wanted to replicate. Since that first visit, I have done so with some regular success, as well a few dense rocks about which it's best to forget. One of the best miche on my quest for this icons of French country bread was from none other than my friend Mick Hartley of Bethesdabakers fame.   

 

Bethesdabakers€™  Poilâne€™ 2k Miche 

(Micks's photo of his huge Miche!)

(Mick's adaption from an avid home baker Alan Zelt of his own version of Poilâne's miche.)

1st Refreshment – morning

Take starter from fridge.

Starter 26g
Water 60g
Rye flour 70g

Mix, cover, stand at room temperature.

2nd Refreshment – bedtime

Starter 114g
Water 40g
Plain Flour 128g

Mix and knead to form a ball, cover, stand at room temperature.

The Dough – following morning

Starter 282g
Water 684g
Plain Flour 786g
Spelt Flour 170g
Rye Flour 64g
Salt 28g

Break up the starter and whisk it into the water. Add the remaining ingredients and mix for 8 minutes in the machine. Form into a loose ball and allow to stand for 15 minutes. Form into a boule and place in a ten or eleven inch banneton. (These days I would probably have a four hour bulk fermentation stage at this point with hourly stretching and folding.)

Depending on your starter and the temperature, rising should take between 6-10 hours.

Preheat the oven to Gas 9 (475F, 240C) – hotter if you can. Turn out the dough, slash and bake spraying the oven a few times in the first 15 minutes. You may want to turn down the oven but, in my oven, even though the crust looks as though it is scorching, 50 minutes baking at full ahead gives a comparatively thin crust and a moist crumb. This is a big loaf.

Improves with standing a few hours or overnight.

Just this last week I was making a version of Dan Leader's favorite levain bread. Again, it is a typical miche. Just by it size alone, it's huge.  While browsing around different bread sites looking at variable in flour, percentages, etc...I fed a mixed levain of rye and wheat I had stored in my fridge from my last version of Amy Scherbers miche, made it up like a stiff levain from Dam Leaders Bread Alone book. From a recent visitor on this site, Jude, I patterned  his  flour mix from Peter Reinharts Poilâne miche using the same amount of water, 75% white whole wheat flour and 25% Bread flour to see if it would mimic the high extraction flour commonly used in this sort of bread. As usual my schedule was pretty much all over the place, so between shifts I fed the starter, retarded it overnight, then made the dough in the early morning with about a 3 hour rise. Then retarded the dough till the the afternoon, when I shaped it and put it back in the fridge for another  18 hours till the next morning whereI let it sit out for a couple of hours to come to temperature and in the oven. Success, the loaf was well expanded and I cut into it and the crumb was somewhat tight but the loaf it self was moist and was not as sour as I expected it to be, actually it was rather balanced.

Miche (adapted from Bouley Bakery)

222g whole wheat flour
1024g t65 flour
33g Rye
891g water
28.salt
2200

168g t65 flour
168g water
168g starter
505

222g Whole wheat flour
855g t65 flour
33g Rye
722g water
28g salt
337g levain
2200

During this search I happened on a newsgroup that included Mike Avery, as well our friend Vincent Talleu who actually went for a trial stage at Poilâne. Their discussion focused on the various theories surrounding the famous Miche at Monsieur Poilâne's. The bare bones and basic production of this type of bread is like the holy grail for some bakers. It makes you wonder, is it really the best bread? The back and forth from bakers included the quantity of flour, hydration and whether or not they use 30 percent spelt. These are all mysteries which I am sure none will get an answer. Unless they work for the famous French bakery, and that is assuming they have to sign a waiver to work there too! My mother has her own stories growing up in her village, where each family would have their own signature miche, each baking it off in the town's communal oven. According to her, the bread would last for days. All to say that the legends of Miche have a history and then some. So here's some more ammunition to add to that history, yourselves!

Vincents Pain Poilâne

To make a two kilogram loaf with that recipe, try:

Preferment:
144 grams Flour
58 grams Old Dough
86 grams Water

Final dough:
960 grams Flour
19 grams Salt
730 grams Water
288 grams Preferment
3 grams Instant Yeast

This is basically how they make their bread at Poilane:

Take old dough(from previous mix), make a preferment with it adding
flour and water to it (100 flour, 40 old dough, about 60water) making
it a tight dough.
Leave it for about an hour to proove.
Then mix the main dough, using:
100 flour T80 (a fine wholemeal. If you don't have T80 available, (I guess you can
just sieve wholemeal flour)
2 coarse sea salt
30 preferment

Enough water to make a nice dough, not too tight.

Mix for 7mn first speed, put in a wooden box for proving, about and
hour and half. Scale your dough 2.2Kg, round up, put in a banneton
with lots of flour. proove these for about an hour, or however long it
will take. 15 mn before they are ready to prove, put lots of wood on
your oven, leave the flame warm up the oven for 10mn, then put water
for steam and start loading your oven, slashing the top with a nice P.
Bake for about an hour. When taking out the bottom of bread should be
almost black.
Of course that's if you have a wood oven like them!

They don't actually weight the flour like I said there, instead they
weigh the water and have the matching amounts of preferement and salt
to the water weigh, after they just add the flour until the dough is
good. But I recalculated it for the flour weigh because I think it's
easier.

It seems long gone, but thanks to Lionel Poilâne vision to re-capture the quintessential loaf that most symbolized the French bread of past generations instead of the recent usurper le baguette!

 

 

Basket case, the case for flouring your banneton with rye...and other baking tips to consider.

It's been some time since I have followed good baking advice, my own or someone else's. Being a lazy baker makes me the last authority on deciding with caution or precision on good baking habits and tips. I suppose making mistakes can eventually change bad habits, with the price of flour, fuel being another reason to  not make bread headed for the garbage bin instead of your table, so observe and learn.

First, flouring the cane basket with rye flour instead of wheat, why you ask? The case for using rye to flour a proofing basket could be described as just plain common sense. But who am I kiddng? Why just the other day  while trying extract a a full 2 lb Miche into a hot creuset pan  I found a sort of hanger on of sticky dough clinging to my German cane brot form,(Actually it happened on my last pot bread, but the finished product did not show as pronounced a flaw to make it look as if  the loaf was misshapen or defective.) This  can be sort of challenging to say the least. Not just the fact of plopping the dough in unceremoniously defies wisdom or just plain sanity. So after yanking the long strand of dough and laying it over the spherical boule like a bald man covering a spot with a long hanging wisp of hair, I plopped back the cast iron cloche into my oven and covered it with it's lid. Bloody hell!

The second bit of advice, is not to pre-heat your creuset to high, why? Unless you like your loaf sort of on the scorched side  and a piece of dough stuck to the bottom of the pan, which would explain why there is a small hole on the bottom of the loaf. Lets just say it happened to me. Of course you could tell your friends that your French instructor from baking class back at school told you to bake the loaves darker for a croustillant quality, to give it that terroir taste or perhaps your researching ash content? Huh!
Since I have just succumbed to the idea that maybe Jim Lahey does have a good idea with his no knead  baking in a pot method, however unorthodox; I still find myself  combining several different baking techniques and methods. I flirt with the Dan Lepards hand mix, I use my mixer, or sometimes to relieve aggression I've used Richard Bertinets slapping and folding technique.

My friend Susan, rightly says to bake you must follow your own senses and not get hung up on rules, so mix and match for me has been useful.

\The Miche is a bread I truly love, it's the quintessential loaf of true French familial origins. It's rustique, its nourishing, just great to slice and slather, with it's deep nutty profile and long shelf life, well it's a bakers bread. This specimen even with my minor flaws is my favorite formula from Amy Scherber of Amy's Bread. It was featured in an article from an issue back in April/May 2002 of  Pastry arts and design. I disregard the yeast and even retarded the dough due to my scheduling, generally I won't schedule a bake, bread to me seems so spontaneous,(actually I have a regular job that manages to screw up my baking time, so I am lying about spontaneity.).

In the past I haven't really liked retarding my dough, up until now. Through observation I found, (can you believe it, I observed, maybe I'm not so lazy after all?), that if you let the dough come back up to temperature, it doesn't blow out or have a grey looking finish. From my recent efforts, I've concluded  that it's not the same to retard the bread in a home refrigerator as it is in a chilled retarding room found in bakeries. The temperature I think in a fridge at home registers say about 35 to 40  degrees. Though I can't say for sure I am assuming retarders are in the low 50 degree range, that could be the difference? When I was taking a class with Jeffrey Hamelman, he told us that you can plop the dough in cold, hasn't worked for me but Jeffrey probably could explain why and tell me a thing or two! I shy away from that only for the simple reason, it hasn't worked for me, so go with instinct or trial and error, but remember every loaf is different. At least I hope they are or it's wonder bread!

 

Mehrkornsaatenbrot

I should know better by now. Sure it's 80 degrees and muggy, and yeah, I know my wife is going to kill me, heating up our sunny Sunnyside apartment. But...this loaf is beautiful. Beautiful! And it's probably the best German loaf I have made since school! Mehrkornsaatenbröt or multigrain bread is what this toothsome and flavorful loaf is called. Without a decent translator or any German vocabulary sufficient to really make sense of directions, I boldly went where no baker goes. In other words, I winged it. And it happens that winging it worked.

True, it certainly isn't 100% Sauer, but it's good. Very good. Oh, yeah, I already said that. Besides boasting, to make up for the heat I'm getting from my wife and the sun, let me just say this: I didn't add any improver in this loaf, no vitamin c or fava bean or even soy flour which seems pretty common in some backerei breads these days. John Downes is frowning on me, but I did add yeast as a fail-safe measure,  only because I wasn't sure about the power of my rye Sauer. Forgive me mate.

Anyway, in truth I Googled a recipe, this one from some trade school named "Bandesfachschule des Deutschen Båckerhandwerks." Roughly translated, it means Technical school of German Hand work bakers. But translated the online directions make no sense at all, and don't give any clue as far as procedure. So here is my "winging it" recipe improvised with help from my fellow bakers in Germany.

The  formula:

Sauer:

90g Rye flour

72g water   

5g  rye sauer

16 hour proof

Soaker:

80g Rye chops 

80g Oat flakes

60g Flax seeds

60g Pumpkin seeds

100g Sunflower seeds

300g Hot water

2-3 hours soak before making the final mix

Final Dough:

162g Sauer

680g Soaker

750g bread flour

10g malted barley powder

23g Sea salt

10g instant yeast, (you maybe more hardcore than I was, go total sauer. The original formula asked for 40g!)

390g Water

Sourdough:
I did a short mix 2 minutes on 1st speed and about 3 on second. I wasn't being ambitious about doing by hand, as time was of the essence as my wife would arrive and I wanted the apartment clean and cool!
First rise: without having written down anything to check my loaves or clock, I assume I watched the news and surfed the internet about an hour, then gave the dough a turn.

One more hour passed and the dough had risen a bit, I figured that the high humidity was a factor and the rye in the Sauer. I weighed out two loaves, and shaped them like jelly roll style and placed them into two oiled loaf pans coated with cornmeal. I sprayed the loaves before and rolled them in the seed mix.
Covered them for about and hour and a half, they were booming and ready to be shoved in the oven. Baked at about 460 degrees Faranheit, my oven sucks and the thermometer is hard to read.

 

 

How's that spelt?

Spelt is grain that is the  current rage in some baking circles. That mystifies me.This bronze age cousin of wheat has peculiar profiles that deem it healthy but is very difficult to handle. First, it has a weak gluten structure and doesn't rise into a lofty and airy loaves unless you're an amazing baker. Next it needs less water; say about 10-to 15 percent less than a normal wheat bread. Oh, yeah, don't over knead! Do I need to say that again with another exclamation point? Sorry, but over kneading kills it. Truth is, you need to handle it particularly gently. Three to four minutes is sufficient to get the flour mixed to use. For directions, let me suggest Dan Lepard's method of short 10 second kneads with some two folds, perhaps even Jim Lahey's no knead. Judge for yourself, but I stray away from using a mixer because of the danger of high speeds.

I first started using spelt flour with my sister at her home in Switzerland, a place  where watches, chocolate and  spelt are king. Why? Well, because spelt is less disease prone and utilizes less fertilizer, as well it is easier to digest for people who suffer with wheat allergies.When baking at her house I'd usually turn out bread that resembled a clay object, flat and unappealing. That said, it's mysteriously sweet nutty taste made up for the aesthetic flaws. It's safe to say the Swiss are on to something.

Last year on vacation, one of the wonderful things  I did on my various "bread adventures" was visit the mill at Maisprach a 6th generation family owned business. The bakers at Australian site Sourdough have been baking lots of loaves. One especially nice loaf was a recent entry from my friend Dom, who mixed the Dan Lepard and Jim Lahey techniques. Wise strategy. Personally, when I tried, my timing was off, and the loaf was slightly past its peak. Still, the result was a nice tasting loaf, somewhat of uneven shape, but still totally satisfying. Soooo... I won't give up on this spelt. Instead I will explore trying some mixed flourspelt breads like those I have seen on some of the German bread forums. Time to get out my translator!