Kamut is a wonderful grain. I'm posting to share a mail order source for organic kamut for those who are familiar with this grain and own a grain mill. (I'm not posting to extoll the virtues of kamut - I happen to love this grain because of it's nutty flavor but I expect readers already to be interested in it and know how to use it)

I've been purchasing (and using) kamut for about five years. I've found it to be pricey and difficult to find. I recently purchased 10 lb of organic kamut for $34 from a 'net mail order source (shipping within the USA is free). This works out to $3.40 per lb.

Here's the link to the site (for organic kamut)  - http://www.myspicesage.com/kamut-grain-organic-p-932.html - the site only ships within the USA. You can also purchase smaller amounts for slightly higher prices. If you have the storage space, you can get 50 lb for $132.50, which translates to $2.65/lb.

If anyone knows of a less expensive *mail order* source for organic kamut (*including* shipping costs) I would appreciate your response. I'm on the north-east coast of the US, so shipping costs are a major consideration.

Hope this helps other lovers of kamut.

I have begun to experiment with grains other than wheat.  I use a Bosch machine, and knead whole wheat bread for 10 minutes with excellent results.

Does anyone know about kneading time for a bread 50% kamut and 50% spelt? 

During our last trip to Portland I lured my (for good reasons) wary husband to go with me to "Rabelais", with the sanctimonious promise "just wanting to look what's new". Rabelais is cooks' equivalent to an opium den, a famous cookbooks-only store; they carry probably every English language (and several foreign language) cookbook on the market, plus many antique ones. Leafing through all these enticing books, looking at all those mouthwatering photos, leaves the mind boggled and the eyes glazed over...We left the store, I with my broken promise - and Jan Hedh's "Swedish Breads & Pastries" -, and my cautious Richard with a (twice as expensive!) magnificent Vietnamese cookbook.

What had caught my attention in Hedh's book was the leaven used in several Pains au Levain - yeast made of raisins or apples. With all that discreetly fomenting leftover apple yeast water in my fridge - thanks to RonRay - I needed another baking challenge after producing one nice  loaf with this strange homemade yeast. Reading the recipes I was quite astonished to learn that fruit yeast is regularly used by French and Italian (and obviously also some Swedish) bakers as milder sourdough alternative. From Ron's (RonRay) and Akiko's (teteke) discussion on fruit yeast breads I had assumed that this was a (somewhat exotic) Japanese invention!

Following Hedh's recipe I cultivated a "mother" (1. step), "chef" (2. step) and then the levain from about a teaspoonful of apple yeast water. When I placed the Pain au Levain in the oven, it looked to me somewhat flat, and I was a bit concerned about it's oven spring capacities. While we were drinking tea, I kept one eye on the oven. At first the rim rose a bit, the middle seemed to cave in - and then I watched incredulously how my bread started growing a veritable horn!

After some suspenseful minutes the whole loaf began to swell ominously, but fortunately stopped short of exploding.

Pain au Levain from Jan Hedh's "Swedish Bread & Pastry

Holey loaf! Apple Yeast Gone Wild - or only baker's impatience?

The bread tasted great, and even with the large holes, we managed to butter the slices and eat them with Südtiroler Speck and Fontina.

This weekend I gave it another try. With the first loaf I had made the dough with brief kneading and autolyse - whereas Jan Hedh suggests long kneading, at low speed, without autolyse. I wanted to see whether it would make any difference if I used his technique, and, also, whether a longer rise in the banneton would affect the bread's "holeyness".

The first loaf I had made with a whole wheat and rye addition, for the second I wanted to use some leftover kamut. The longer kneaded dough got warm faster than stated in the recipe - the water should have been colder - but I didn't notice the slightest difference in dough consistency or performance to the one I made before. And I like the idea with brief kneading and autolyse much better.

This time I tried to catch the exactly right moment of the optimal rise before placing the bread in the oven. And then I watched and - saw another horn growing, though less pronounced than the first one. And the bread had, again, a very strong oven spring.

Pain au Levain with kamut

So I guess it's really The Power of The Apple Yeast

The kamut version tastes as good as the first bread. And now I'm going to have a slice!

Hello,

I have used wholemeal spelt for both bread and pasta and also white spelt for bread.

I have used Kamut / Khorasan / Egyptian Gold once for pasta, but am not very familiar with the properties of this flour, apart from that it is very similar to spelt.

I would like to know how Kamut compares to spelt particularly for breadmaking. (Health & nutrition, protein, ease of digestion, breadmaking, taste etc...) ??

and anything else that may be of particular interest regarding these flours?

Thanks Heaps!

In my continuing quest to stick any fruit I can into a loaf of bread, I wanted to try adding some type of citrus to a loaf of bread. Pears, strawberries, and bananas worked, so why not right? I figured that if I left individual sections whole and was very gentle when handling the dough, they wouldn't add too much excess moisture. That meant I needed to use a rather small citrus, and since I happened to have satsumas around they got the nod. I made from zest from them to put in the dough too, and used an orange olive oil so the bread itself would also carry a bit of the citrus flavor. Almonds seem to pair the best with citrus to me, so I used some slices almonds in the loaves. In the future I don't think I'll use sliced almonds, they don't distribute quite as evenly in the dough, live and learn!

Almond and Satsuma Bread

Makes: 2 medium, or 3 small loaves

Time: Day 1: Elaborate starter. Day 2: Mix final dough, fold dough shape, proof, and bake.

Ingredients:

Directions:

1. Elaborate your starter however you choose, but ending up with the same flour and water weights. (or make a commercial yeast preferment) Allow it to rise overnight.
2. The next day cream the starter with the water for the recipe, then add in the honey and hazelnut butter.
3. Mix together the flours, zest, and salt, then mix in the starter, water, and oil til the dough just starts to come together as a ball. Let the dough sit covered in the bowl for 20 minutes
4. Lightly dust your counter or work space with flour and scrape the dough out. With lightly floured hands, give the dough a stretch and fold and then flatten it out into a rectangle. Spread as many of the almonds as possible over the top of the dough, then give it a fold or two to incorporate them. Once the almonds are incorporated put the satsuma sections on the top of the dough and do two more sets of gentle stretch and folds to incorporate the satsuma pieces.
5. Leave the bowl covered for 40 minutes to an hour, turn the dough out (seam side up) and give it another stretch and fold, then return it to the bowl. You can also give the dough one final stretch and fold after about 40 minutes.
6. Let the dough rise until nearly doubled, and turn it out again onto your work surface.
7. Prepare well floured brotforms, or flour a towel you can use for the final proofing of the bread. Treating the dough gently, seperate it into however many pieces you want loaves. Either shape the loaves into boules, batards, or do a letter fold and stretch them tight for brotforms. Place the shaped loaves in brotforms or on the towels (seam side up)
8. Leave the loaves, covered, to proof, for me this was about an hour and a half.
9. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees with your baking stone (on the middle rack) and steam pan inside and heat 2 cups of water to just shy of boiling.
10. Very gently grab loaves rising on a towel, and move them to a peel with flour, cornmeal, or parchment paper. If using brotforms, just invert the loaves onto parchment or a peel. Just before you load the loaves into the oven give them a few shallow slashes. Load the loaves into the oven and carefully pour the hot water into the steam pan. Be careful of the window and light bulbs in your oven.
11. Bake for 10 minutes, turn loaves 180 degrees and remove parchment paper if using. Continue baking for another 10-25 minutes, the loaves should sound hollow on the bottom when complete. Remove finished loaves to a cooling rack and let sit for at least 1 hour before cutting.

I think what really made this bread work was the incorporation of the zest and orange olive oil. The weight on the zest is actually a bit variable, same for the satsuma sections, I just used 3 satsumas and all the zest and sections from all 3. The oil and zest really help bring a subtle citrus flavor to all of the bread, leaving the pieces of satsuma as still slightly juicy bursts of citrusy flavor. The satsumas don't get completely dried out, but they do get somewhat concentrated. I can definitely say this is a bread that needs no orange marmalade! The pear puree can be replaced with probably about 3-3.7 oz of water, however I think the puree helps to keep the bread a bit moist and carry the citrus flavors better. I had a little trouble with the stencil on this one, the characters had some 'floating' sections so I had to cut the stencil with small lines connecting those. I need to work on a way to make that look a bit better. Now I just need to decide on a fruit to tackle next...

Some pictures:

I got it in my head this weekend that I wanted to make a loaf of Pugliese (for the first time).  I was working from the recipe in "The Bread Baker's Apprectice" and realized it called for Fancy Durum - but thought I would go the next morning and get some from Whole Foods or PCC (here in Seattle).  But I didn't find it at either store.  A few internet searches on my mobile phone led me to believe that I could substitute some Kamut for the Durum (which I was able to find at PCC). 

So, I used about a 40-60 Kamut-Bread flour mixture for the dough and proceeded.  Picture of the results below.  I will have to eithr mail-order some Durum or find a local supply for next time in order to compare/contrast - but I was fairly pleased with the results.  There's sort of a question here.  Is Kamut an acceptable substutute for Durum or is it just entirely different?  The bread turned out to have a nice aroma and the crumb is very chewy and has a very pleasing texture.  The crust is even more chewy. 

Thoughts?

Ongoing Kamut experiment... a short one.

Monday Morning:

I have 600g Kamut berries.  Dirctions say how to cook, 2 cups water for 1 cup berries washed in sieve.  I decided to use the rice cooker for my good 4 cups of grain.  By washing, it was clear that the grain was better washed in a large bowl and water poured off the top to remove parts of hulls and dust.  The berries are large enough to drain in a colander.   I then let the rice cooker do the work with 1 tsp of salt.  All the water was absorbed and the grain took on a caramel color with a nutty fragrance. 

Now what?  I was hoping to put this grain into a rye bread but I had to eat some first.  Very chewy.  Very chewy indeed!  Now I'm not so sure I want it whole in my bread.  I was eating chili for lunch so I combined some cooked grain into it.  Uh, ok, not the best idea, but I did get a glimpse of the texture with other food.  The tough chewy berries stood out.  "Roughage" kept going through my head.  I guess the blender is the next step, make the grains smaller.  Will I come out with a pudding like substance?   I have to think about this....  any ideas?  (Meanwhile, starter is being refreshed.)  I need some coffee.

Kamut has not been available for a while but it should have been harvested by now.

Anyone have a source for Kamut berries in bulk? (40-60# bags/buckets). All I can find are the little, very high-priced 24oz bags.

I live in the Milwuakee,Wisconsin,USA area. Anyone interested,locally, in a joint order to reduce costs? I have a relative in Minneapolis and CHicago that can also pick up an order for me if there is a local source. 

I just tried to order Kamut from my supplier, and when they were out, I called their supplier out in Montana: There will be no more Kamut til the harvest in late Aug to Sept.  What a bummer this is!  I've really grown to like the stuff.

SOL

I went down to our local mill and purchased some exotic flours the other day.  I want to use them as additions to our favorite whole wheat recipe.  I was just wondering if anyone else has worked with these flours and has some good recipes for them.  I started out today by adding some quinoa to the recipe and it came out dense, but boy was it good.

Thank in advance.
Lydia