Magic Spelt Bread
This bread tends to disappear straight after taking it out of the oven, if you don't watch it carefully. A no nonsense bread without the whole hullabaloo that one usually comes across when going through bread recipe instructions.
Bread is much easier to make than many recipe books or sites make you believe. Even simple breads are dressed up there with a whole lot of ballony around it. One of the most challenging breads to make is spelt bread, apparently. Here is a no nonsense way to make it:
- 300 grams Spelt Flour (I prefer organic spelt flour)
- 350 grams Wholemeal Wheat Flour (I prefer the organic type)
- 3 teaspoons Dry Yeast
- 2 teaspoons Sugar (Any sugar)
- 1 teaspoon Salt
- 4 tablespoons Olive Oil (Or any other vegetable oil)
- 60 milliliters Water (Warm)
- 250 milliliters Milk (Warm)
- How to put everything together:
- Pour luke warm water (<30C) into a large bowl, add the suger and dry yeast. Cover with a kitchen towl and keep warm (<30C) for about 10 min (time not critical, but just not too much longer).
- Add the warm milk (soy milk, water, etc. work too if preferred), mix thouroughly with fork.
- Add the spelt flour and salt. At stage, you may also add some seeds or such if you like. The bread in the photo has had 3 tbsp sunflower seeds added to it. User fork to stir the spelt flour into the milk until all ends up like a soft, sticky mess.
- Add the whole meal flour and use fork to combine everything until all flour is well mixed to a big ball of dough.
- Use hands to knead the dough until everything is well combined and you have smooth, fairly elastic ball of dough (about 5-10 min).
- Place the dough into a bread tin lined with baking paper, cover with kitchen towl and keep it in or at a warm place (<30C) for about 60 min (timing is not critical here, but try keep it below 2h). The dough will rise by about half its original volume. (Did you notice the dough went straight into the baking tin and there was nothing of the hullabaloo of knocking it back, letting rise again, knocking it back again, etc.? Well that's the other magic thing about the bread here).
- After its 60 min resting time, the bread tin cum dough goes traight into the oven (180C) for about 45-50 min.
Optional: You may add some flavor, texture or taste to your bread with either some sunflower seeds, cardamon seeds, cumin, raisons, or whatever else you fancy.
Storage: Since we live in a climatically challenging area (subtropical), we keep our breads in the freezer, i.e, we pre-cut the bread as shown in the photo and then freeze it. We take out slices as needed and pop them into the toaster where they come out as fresh as if straight from the oven.
Thank you for giving this recipe a go!
Mimi Mo