Spelt. I LOVE IT!

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: