I am completely, totally, utterly, wholly in love with spelt everything. I love the taste. I love that my stomach doesn’t double in size after I’ve eaten it. I love that people don’t offer me a seat on the tube anymore because they think I’m pregnant. I am smitten with spelt.
The thing with cutting back on gluten in your diet is that gluten free recipes can be tricky. Take these attempts at flat breads the other night:
Yup, disaster. Not bad flavour though, but they were like chewing concrete.
Even though spelt is gaining in popularity it is still not that easy to find 100% spelt flour bread so, I like to make my own. There is no greater stress reliever than kneading dough and there is so much satisfaction in making your own loaf of bread. I started tweaking a standard bread recipe a few months ago until I got it so that my bread always turned out the way I wanted – not too salty, too yeasty or too dry.
You will need:
250g white spelt flour
250g wholemeal spelt flour
2 teaspoons of Maldon salt (less for table salt)
I desert spoon of spreadable butter or butter at room temperature
One 7g sachet of dried yeast
300ml of warm water
Weigh out the flour.
Add 2 teaspoons of salt at one end
And a packet of yeast on the opposite side
Then scoop out a dessertspoon full of butter and add it to the mixture
Rub in the butter with your fingers until you have a bread crumby texture
Slowly add in the warm water, either with a spoon or your hands. You may need more as you want the dough to be a little wet and sticky
Flour your surface (or coat in oil) and knead for 10 minutes until you have a supple dough. It won’t be sticky anymore
Put your dough in a bowl and cover with cling film (or a wet tea towel) and leave for an hour
After and hour it will have doubled in size
Knock it back – basically deflated it and shape it how you want. You can lightly oil a tray and make little rolls or make a large sausage and put it in an oiled bread tin. I then lightly brush the top with oil and leave it covered again for 30 minute – it will rise again. Score the top just before you put it in the oven. Add a pan of water to the bottom shelf to help the crust form and bake on 200°c for 30 minutes. When you take the bread out of the oven turn it out of its tin and tap the bottom, it should sound hollow.
I have an amazing ‘loaf’ tin from John Lewis but I couldn’t find it to add a link, hopefully they’ll start selling it again. Otherwise, you can just do what I used to do and use a normal loaf tin, like below:
YAY… the baking tin is back in stock: http://www.johnlewis.com/john-lewis-professional-non-stock-embossed-loaf-tin-2lb/p452265
Debsx
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