Heirloom and ancient grains 101: Spelt Flour

When I started on my journey to wellness, I was told to be gluten free. I really did not want to go gluten free and completely totally lactose free. I decided to experiment with baking breads with heirloom flours. My first couple loaves were bricks! Then I started to very slowly systematically calculate the ratio of heirloom flour to organic non-GMO bread flour. BINGO! This works.

I thought that I would start talking a little bit about the different heirloom flours and grains that I am baking with at this time. Any of the breads that I ate in the supermarkets that were baked with gluten free flours or spelt flours were like bricks. I avoided spelt flour like the plague. Then I started baking with the heirloom flours and I thought I could definitely bake a better spelt flour loaf of bread than the supermarket types!

This Bob of Bob’s Red Mill

I have been using Bob’s Red Mill Spelt Flour. This spelt flour is 100% stone ground from a delicious, easily digestible ancient grain that is a primitive relative of modern wheat. I have to given a big thumb’s up to the customer service at Bob’s Red Mill. I ordered a case of Kamut, Spelt and Teff flour. When the shipment arrived, one of the bags of flour has exploded in the shipping. Bob’s crack customer service team apologized and sent out a replace bag the next day.

According to Bob’s Red Mill website, spelt flour has a mild flavor that is nutty and slightly sweet. The light texture means your baked goods won’t be heavy or dense, making whole wheat spelt flour a good addition to all kinds of recipes. Spelt is part of the wheat family and does contain gluten. However, some people with a gluten sensitivity report that wheat flour made from spelt grain is easier to digest.

In ancient times, spelt (triticum spelta) was thought to be a gift to the Greeks from Demeter, goddess of the harvest. Early evidence indicates that the history of spelt stretches back to fifth millennium BC in the Near East. It was an extremely important crop in Europe during the Bronze and Iron Ages, spreading widely in central Europe and especially southern Germany and Switzerland. This may be because the durable husk made it an ideal grain for cold climates, as well as easy to store. 

Spelt came to the United States in the late 1800s. It was replaced by common wheat in the 20th century. However, the artisanal and organic movement revived interest in spelt, and spelt flour is widely used in the making of breads, crackers and other baked goods. 

Spelt flour is a good source of fiber. Bob’s Red Mill spelt flour has 5 grams of protein per 1/4-cup serving. The gluten in spelt flour produces delicious yeast bread, and it can be used to replace wheat flour to create homemade pasta. Interested in baking with spelt flour? When you start baking with spelt flour, replace 25% of the wheat flour called for in your recipes with the spelt flour. You can generally substitute up to 50% of the regular wheat flour in many recipes for baked goods with the spelt flour.

I will report back to you all about my newest loaf of bread. I mixed the dough with a sourdough starter, cooked buckwheat groats, a baked sweet potato and 50% spelt flour. The dough feel great right now. The ultimate test is the flavor.

22% Heirloom flour loaf

I could call this post Struan bread, take three. I thought that was boring. What is exciting is that I am now up to 22% heirloom flour in this loaf of bread.

Struan bread, again, begins with the soaker. I thought that some of the buckwheat groat were a little hard and too crunchy in the last loaf of bread. They just didn’t soften enough in the overnight soaker. Last night, I soaked the polenta, quinoa and buckwheat groats in boiling water. I used all the same measured weights. This addition of boiling water really softened the texture of the buckwheat groats.

Time for some math. I went back to my Artisan Bread Baking class on Craftsy.com with Peter Reinhart to review the baker’s bread formula. In that formula, the total weight of the flour is 100%. All other ingredients are a percentage of this weight. My flour weight is 260 grams of bread flour plus 17 grams of whole wheat flour. This yields 277 grams as my 100% of the total flour weight. To bake this loaf of bread, I need 277 grams of flour in combination.

Today, I increased my heirloom flour, spelt flour to 15% of the total weight, 39 grams. I added 17 grams of flax seed flour. Last I added 221 organic King Arthur bread flour. I am being boring in that I am using the same ingredients for each loaf to maintain some consistency in the loaf texture. This way when I reach the point that I can no longer increase the amount of heirloom flour, I will be able to tell from the texture of the bread.

I took the temperature of my flour prior to mixing the dough. My flour temperature for 68 F, not bad for a kitchen with an ambient temperature of 66 F. In theory, if I want my dough to be 80 F before going into the proofing box, I needed to get my soy milk warmed up. I warmed up the soy milk to 100 degrees. I added all the ingredients into the bowl and mixed. After 4 minutes of manual mixer kneading, the dough was 75.7 F. Not too bad.

I kneaded the dough for about 3 minutes and this manual manipulation increased the temperature to 76.6 F I thought that this would be the best that I could get prior to getting the dough into the proofing box. Three stretch and turns and then into the proofing box at 82 with a humidity tray.

My dough doubled in size in 2 hours. Not bad. I shaped my loaf. Last time, I had a difficult time getting my loaf out of the pan. I sprayed the pan with olive oil and dusted it with spelt flour. I egg washed the bread and sprinkled it with Trader Joe’s Everything but the Bagel topping. If you haven’t tried this topping, you need to run to Trader Joe’s and buy it! I see that King Arthur’s has a similar product and it is less expensive. I may need to buy that one for comparison.

Everything was looking good. I took the dough out of the proofing box. It was a little damp. The pan slipped out of my hands! PLOP! Bottom down on the table. The loaf deflated by half. CRAP! Back into the proofing box it went. I was crossing my fingers that it would rise again.

Here’s the dough ready to go into the oven. It did rise a third time. It was lopsided but it did raise.

Here’s the loaf of bread. It did rise and have a good crumb. It was not crumbly. The Everything but the Bagel topping was good. The poppy seeds give the bread a little bit of sweetness.

Lesson Learned

1. The Struan Bread was good with 22% heirloom flours. This bread rises even with the non-traditional flours at this proportion.

2. Don’t drop the pan! The dough had a great rise. It was probably the best rise I have gotten so far. I was happy that the dough did rise the third time.

3. I will continue to measure the temperature of my flour and adjust the water temperature so that my dough starts out at a warmer temperature. It decreased the proofing time.

4. I need to keep the temperature of my proofing box at 82-84 degrees. I am also using the humidity tray. I like my proofing box.

I think that my next loaf will be the cooked grains loaf from the Artisan Ancient Grains class. I have gotten good results from the Struan recipe. Time to move onto another type of bread.

Struan Bread, Take two

I officially started to experiment with adding heirloom flours in my bread baking. I am systematically changing the percentage ratio of bread flour to heirloom flour.

I started with my soaker again of polenta, quinoa and buckwheat groats. No need for another boring picture.

Today’s bread blend is spelt flour, non-GMO organic bread flour and flax seed flour. The flax seed flour is in place of the whole wheat flour in the recipe. I substituted 10% spelt flour for the organic bread flour in the dough today. Recap of the grains: polenta, quinoa, buckwheat groats, flax seed flour, spelt flour, brown rice and bread flour.

I was amazed to see how much softer and wetter the dough was today. I had to add about 5-8 grams more of spelt flour during the kneading process. I am using the stretch and fold process again today. However, I will allow the dough to rest 15 minutes between the stretch and folds.

I need to talk a little about desired dough temperature. This is a new concept for me in baking. I always just mix up my bread, cover it with plastic wrap and let it rise. I never thought about taking the temperature of the dough.

After a little research, I read that dough likes to rise at 80 degrees internal temperature. Some bakers will measure the ambient room temperature and the flour temperature while they are mixing the dough. The baker will take the temperature of the water that they are adding. They will subtract the cool flour temperature from 80 degrees. They add the remainder of the flour temperature to the temperature of the water. For example, the temperature of the flour is 70 degrees. 80 subtract 70 is 10. The temperature of your water is 80 degrees. You would add the 10 degrees to the 80 to get a desired water temperature of 90 degrees. In theory if you mix the warmer water to the dough mix, your dough will magically arrive at the 80 F temperature perfect ready for the proofing box.

The Perfect Loaf website has a desired dough temperature calculator. They use a more involved formula. I’m glad that the math is a plug the numbers into the formula type of math!

I took my dough temperature after mixing, kneading and doing the stretch and folds. It was only 71 degrees. I needed to raise the temperature in my proofing box to 81 degrees to get a good rise on my dough. Even with my proofing box at 81 F, it took my dough 4 hours to rise. This will produce a good flavor but I was hoping for a little quicker rise time than this.

My patience has been rewarded! I have a loaf that is cresting the top of the loaf pan. The second rise only took an hour. I am sure that this is because the dough was at 81 F when I shaped it and popped in into the loaf pan.

I love the bubble on the top crust. This is a gorgeous golden brown loaf

Look at all of the air pockets.  It is a soft moist bread.   It is well baked with a good crumb.   I was very excited to see how well it rose.   The 10% spelt flour didn’t seem to effect the  lightness of the crumb of the bread.   I have been tolerating eating breads baked with the heirloom flours.   So far, so good.   I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Lessons learned.

1.  I will pay more attention to the desired dough temperature.   This makes the fermentation/rise time shorter.   I will take a temperature of the flour and add water that is warmer.   For this bread, I would need to warm up the milk.
2. I will continue to set the temperature in the proofing box at 80F.   This seems to be a good temperature for my winter kitchen. 
3. Next time I will increase the spelt flour to 15%. This combination of King Arthur organic bread flour plus the heirloom flours is producing tasty loaves of bread that are not dense at all.   I want to find the sweet spot of more heirloom flour than traditional flours.  If I did the math correctly, the spelt flour and flax seed flour accounts for 18% of the flour in the bread.   That is a good amount of heirloom flours in a multi-grain bread.   
4. Onto Struan bread, take 3 this week with more spelt and closer attention to dough temperature