Spelt and Poppyseed Sourdough Bread

For an easy sourdough bread, make this loaf. It includes white spelt, bread flour, and lots of poppyseeds, and the sourdough flavor is amazing. 

If you're just starting out on your sourdough journey, this spelt and poppyseed sourdough bread is an easy loaf to make. The method is simple and the resulting loaf has a wonderfully sour flavor, a crispy crust, and an airy crumb. 

Spelt, Barley, and White Wheat Rustic Loaf

This spelt, barley, and white rustic loaf is super easy to make in a morning or afternoon and is a pretty failproof way to capture the flavors of whole spelt and barley while using the structure that bread flour provides. 

 
This spelt and barley bread recipe takes advantage of the wonderful flavors of ancient grains while still maintaining the structure of an airy artisan loaf. 

Whipped Spelt Bread

This whipped spelt bread is called "whipped" because you beat the dough at high speed before refrigerating overnight to let it ferment. The resulting bread is full of flavor. 

This bread is a combination of bread flour and whole spelt flour, along with water, salt and yeast. 

Spelt Pita Bread

This spelt pita bread, made with a mixture of whole grain spelt and all purpose spelt, is so much fun to bake. 

Baking pita bread requires a super hot oven equipped with a baking stone, and a very short baking time. If you are like me, and love staring through the window of your oven as your bread bakes, you will enjoy making this bread.

Whole Grain Spelt Rolls

These whole grain spelt rolls with freshly milled spelt and sourdough starter are incredibly flavorful. 

Of course they are wonderful warm from the oven with butter, but my favorite way to have them is to slice them in half, toast them, and top them with a fried egg and bacon.

Spelt and Einkorn Sourdough Bread with Caramelized Onions

I was a little bit nervous about making this Spelt and Einkorn Sourdough Bread with Caramelized Onions. I've worked with spelt before, but always by combining it with bread flour. In fact, I have five breads on this blog that contain whole spelt, including this Spelt and Whole Wheat and this Basic Country Loaf with Spelt. I've never worked with einkorn flour.

Spelt and Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread

This is Spelt and Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread.

Spelt you ask? What is that? It is an ancient grain now grown mostly in Europe. You can purchase it already ground or in whole berries to grind your own spelt flour. To read more about spelt, check out this post.

This bread is pretty easy to make and does not require a mixer. Even though it is a very wet dough, it is fairly easy to handle, probably due to the whole wheat and whole spelt. It is delicious with butter, toasted, and grilled (as in grilled cheese sandwich, tuna melt, etc.). It's very tasty thinly sliced and served with spreads, cheeses, and meats too.

You will need a sourdough starter at 100% hydration to leaven this bread. If you don't have one, you can start one. The King Arthur Flour site has an easy recipe for starting your own.

You will also need a kitchen scale and a very large bowl or dough rising bucket. I baked these in cast iron Dutch ovens. If you don't have one, you can rig up a pizza stone and an upside down metal bowl, as shown in this post.

This is the March Bread of the Month (The BOM) for our Facebook Artisan Bread Bakers baking group. The recipe was contributed by Nancy, who takes some of the best bread photographs I have ever seen. She modified a recipe from the amazing book, Tartine.

Spelt and Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread Recipe

Sourdough Starter/Levain

Mix 50g of any starter with 200g water, 100g bread flour, and 100g of whole wheat flour. Let stand at room temperature, covered, overnight until bubbly and active.

To Make the Bread

Ingredients

300 g spelt flour

600 g bread flour

100 g whole wheat flour

70 g wheat germ

150 g of the sourdough starter/levain

800 g warm (80 degrees F) water

25 g sea salt

50 g warm water

Instructions

In a large bowl or dough rising bucket, whisk together the spelt, bread, and whole wheat flours, and the wheat germ.

In another bowl, mix the 150 g of starter with the 800 g of water. Pour the levain/water mixture over the flour and mix by hand. It should look like this:

Cover and let sit (autolyse) for 30 minutes.

Add the salt, the 50 g of warm water, and mix by hand to fully incorporate the salt. Cover the container for bulk fermentation.

You will need to do 5 stretch and folds every 30 minutes for the first 2 1/2 hours. Place your hand or a dough scraper under the dough, pull it up, and fold it over the top of the dough. Do this from all four "sides." Flip the ball over, and re-cover the container. Each time you do a stretch and fold, you will see the dough begin to smooth out. 

Here it is after the second stretch and fold:

And after the final one:

After the final stretch and fold, cover the dough and allow it to rise 60 to 90 minutes longer. It will not have necessarily doubled in size, but it will be soft and airy. Mine was about 1 1/2 times its original size. 

On an unfloured surface, divide the dough in half and gently shape the dough into rounds. Be careful not to degas the dough. Cover the rounds with oiled plastic wrap and let them rest for 30 minutes. 

Shape the dough into boules. This video provides a great demonstration of the method (go to minute 3:09). 

Place the boules, seam side up, into floured baskets. I coated one of my loaves in seeds before placing it in the basket. Cover the baskets in oiled plastic wrap, and refrigerate overnight. 

The next morning, place two Dutch ovens in the oven and preheat it to 500 degrees F (if you have just one Dutch oven, leave the other loaf in the refrigerator until after you've baked the first loaf and have reheated the pan). 

Carefully transfer the dough to the Dutch oven, seam side down. I turn the dough out onto a piece of good parchment paper, and then use that as a sling to lift the dough into the pan. The parchment seems to hold up just fine (no fires so far). 

Slash the top of the dough, cover the pot, and place it back in the oven. At the 20 minute mark, reduce the oven temperature to 450 degrees F. After another 10 minutes, remove the tops of the pans, and continue to bake for another 15 to 25 minutes, until the bread reaches 210 degrees F and is a deep golden brown. 

Remove from the pan and cool on a wire rack. 

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Country Boule with Spelt and Sourdough

This country boule with spelt and sourdough has a wonderful sourdough flavor and aroma even though it contains a combination of 100% sourdough starter and a small amount of commercial yeast.

If you have an active starter, you can make this bread in just a few hours with very little hands on time. The trick is not to add too much flour. Try to keep the dough sticky but still workable.

Multi-grain and Spelt 100% Sourdough Boule

This sourdough bread is one of my new favorites. Even though it's 100% sourdough, the bread can be made in one day (albeit you must start early). The bread has a wonderful fruity sourdough tang.

The dough for this bread is 80% hydration. What does that mean? It's really wet and sticky. In order to get the dough to come together and be workable, I used the "stretch and fold" method. It really is an amazing thing to see the dough come together so that it can develop lovely pockets of air.

Whenever I write about this method, I usually send you to Peter Reinhart's excellent video here. If you're a total bread geek (like me), I think you'd like Craig Ponsford's demonstration too. Go to the 4:40 mark on this video to see the "stretch and fold" method.

This bread contains a blend of bread flour, whole spelt, and a mix of different grains. Because I had some on hand, I used King Arthur Flour's 9-grain blend, but you could easily use a blend of whole wheat, barley, oat, and rye flours. If you can't find barley or oat flours, just play around with whole wheat and rye, or whatever you can find, until you find a blend that you like.

Although my bread did expand in the oven, I think I should have put it into the oven just a bit earlier. This dough rose much more quickly than I expected during the second rise. Check out the Finger Dent Test video here on Ken Forkish's site for tips on how to know when your loaves are ready for the oven. He also has a great video on how to shape the loaves.

Helpful tools:

Dough scraper, bench knife, 12 quart dough rising bucket or large wide bowl, 9-inch bowls (2) or brotforms, and a baking stone or 2 Dutch ovens. You don't "need" all of this stuff, but they do make it easier.

Multi-grain and Spelt 100% Sourdough Boule

Ingredients

430 grams 100% active hydration sourdough starter 

750 grams bread flour

150 grams whole spelt flour

100 grams of a mixture of whole wheat, whole rye, and other flours

700 grams bottled or filtered water

20 grams salt

Instructions

1. Stir the starter, flours, and water together in a large bowl or bucket until everything is blended, about 3 to 5 minutes. Cover with plastic wrap and let it sit for about an hour. 
2. Add the salt, and using your wet hands, pinch the salt into the dough, alternately mixing the dough with your hands, and pinching the dough with your fingers. Do this until you feel the dough develop a little tension. 
3. Let it rise, covered with plastic, at room temperature for 30 minutes. Stretch and fold, and cover again. Stretch and fold two more times, at 30 minute intervals. Let the dough continue to rise until nearly doubled, about another 90 to 120 minutes. 
4. Lightly flour a work surface, and scrape the dough out of the bowl/bucket. 
5. With a wet bench knife, divide the dough into two pieces. 
6. Loosely shape the dough the pieces into two balls, cover with oiled plastic wrap, and let rest for about 15 minutes. 
7. Flour two brotforms or line two bowls with floured dishtowels. 
8. Shape the dough into boules and place them, seam side up, in the bowls. Cover with plastic wrap and let them rise at room temperature for 1 to 2 hours.
9. Prepare the oven for steam by placing a baking stone on a lower rack and a broiler pan underneath it. You will be tossing hot water into the broiler pan right after placing the loaves in the oven. If you'd rather go the Dutch oven route, see this post for instructions. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees F.
10. When the loaves are ready, turn them out onto peel or the back of a baking sheet lined with good parchment paper. Slash, and slide the loaves, parchment and all, onto the stone. Place one cup of boiling water into the broiler pan and immediately shut the oven door. Turn the oven down to 475 degrees F. 
11. After 20 minutes, pull the parchment out from under the breads and reduce the oven temperature to 425 degrees F. Bake for approximately another 30 to 40 minutes, until the internal temperature reaches about 205 to 210 degrees F. 
12. Cool completely on a wire rack. 

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Basic Country Loaf with Spelt

This Basic Country Loaf with spelt was a big hit in our house.

In fact, Mr. Kitchen announced that it was his favorite bread so far. Ever. This from Mr. White Bread? Go spelt!

About three years ago, when I first caught the bread baking bug, I picked up a copy of Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson at a Williams Sonoma outlet. I read it, adapted some of the methods, but never actually tried any of breads in the book. I'll admit that I was a little intimidated. The first recipe, including the starter, is 88 pages.

This is one of the reasons I am so happy to have been assigned Sally's blog, Bewitching Kitchen, for this month's Secret Recipe Club.  How did they know????? It was meant to be!

Let's start with the reasons why:

1. We both baked our way through Peter Reinhart's Bread Bakers Apprentice. That means we made every single recipe. 
2. She wrote this really cool post about how to revive a sourdough starter. She mentioned "shed a tear" in the same sentence with sourdough starter. This is a girl after my own heart. 
3. We both work at a university. 
4. We both believe in "everything in moderation, including moderation."
5. She broke the Basic Country loaf down to one page and made it with spelt flour. 

I'm in! 

Sally is not just about bread either. She has an amazing array of recipes on her index. It's worth a visit.

Basic Country Loaf

Adapted from Bewitching Kitchen, adapted from Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson

Starter

50 g whole spelt flour

50 g white flour

100 g room temperature water

1 T active sourdough starter

Dough

375 g room temperature water, divided into 350 g plus 25 g

100 g starter

450 g all purpose flour

50 g whole spelt flour

10 g salt 

Instructions

1. The night before you plan to bake the bread, stir the starter ingredients in a large bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let it sit for 12 to 14 hours. 
2. The next morning, in a large bowl or Cambro 8-Quart Food Containermix 350 g of the water and 100 g of starter until the starter has dissolved. 
3. Add the flours, and mix with a large spoon or dough whisk until the flour and water are incorporated. 
4. Cover with a lid or plastic wrap and let sit for about 40 minutes.
5. Add the salt and the rest of the water and mix with your hands by pinching the salt into the dough. Then fold the dough until it comes together and forms a cohesive mass. Cover and let it sit for 30 minutes. 
6. For the next 2 hours, fold the dough by pulling the underside of the dough and folding it over the top from all four "sides" every thirty minutes for a total of four "stretch and fold" sessions. 
7. Let the dough rise in a warm (80 degree) environment for another hour. If your kitchen is cooler, allow more time. The dough should be bubbly, but not necessarily doubled in size. 
8. Remove the dough from the bucket/bowl, and lightly flour the top of the dough. Using dough scrapers, flip the dough over, and fold it over from all four "sides" to form a ball. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let it rest for 20 minutes.
9. Heavily dust a banneton or towel lined bowl (about 9 inches wide) with a 50/50 mixture of brown rice flour and wheat flour. 
10. Fold the dough over itself from all four sides to create a ball, and lift it into the banneton with two dough scrapers or bench scrapers. Place it seam side up. Spray the top with spray oil, and cover loosely with plastic wrap. 
11. Allow the dough to rise for 3 to 4 hours. My dough was ready at 2 1/2 hours. 
12. About 45 minutes before you are ready to bake, place a cast iron Dutch oven in the oven and preheat it to 450 degrees F.
13. When the dough is ready, remove the Dutch oven from your oven and remove the top. (Be careful, it is hot!)
14. Place a piece of parchment paper over the dough, and place a plate on top of the parchment. Flip the dough over and lift off the banneton. Lift the dough with the parchment and place it into the Dutch oven. Score the dough, and cover. Place the Dutch oven back into the oven. 
15. Bake covered for 20 minutes. Remove the cover and bake for another 25 minutes, until the dough reaches 210 degrees internally. 
16. Cool on a wire rack. Or just break into it. 

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