Although I've been making challah for a long time and have tried various recipes, lately it has seemed bland.  Maybe it's because I've gotten so used to multigrain sourdough hearth breads for the balance of the week.  However, somewhere I heard or read that adding spelt flour to challah dough gives it a sweet, nutty flavor.  Has anyone tried it, and, if so, what proportion of spelt flour have you used?  I'd love your recipe!

This was first posted on my blog Healthy Living @ http://www.ourwholesomehomes.com

Not to long ago Grand Central Bakery in Portland OR sold raisin panini, but according to my brother in law who drove out to the bakery regularly just to pick them up, they stopped making them, so with that said I decided to create my own version of panini. In the process of my last bake I took 2 kg of the dough that was made for bread and convert it to panini dough. Since I was going for a healthier version of panini I used spelt based sourdough.

Dough recipe.

400 gr 150% hydration rye starter.
800 gr Organic whole Spelt flour.
200 gr Organic dark rye flour.
600 gr Organic white flour.
30 gr Salt.
2 handful of raisins (reason I don't measure these is that you can never have to much raisins and same goes for walnut).
1 handful of walnut.

Soak your raisins in water for about an hour, then pat them dry with a paper towel, the reason for doing this is that they will have lots of water and it will make your dough to moist.

Mix your starter with water, add flour and salt mix, for 3 minutes.

Rest the dough for about 20 minutes in a bowl.

Knead for 5 minutes.

Rest again for 30 minutes.

Take your dough and dump it on a counter add your raisins and walnut to it and knead for about 10 minutes you will have to adjust the dough by adding more flour to it, the best way to do this is by taking your hands and sticking them in to the flour and mixing the dough, this way the flour will be absorbed evenly, you might have to repeat this for few times until your dough is nice and elastic.

Place the dough back into the bowl, cover it with a tea towel and let it rise for 4 to 6 hours or until almost double.

Divide the dough into small rolls, just smaller than tennis ball size and let it proof for 1 to 2 hours. The best way to check if it's ready is if you use a finger press test.

Place in your wood fired oven, spray some water above it to create steam, close the door and let them bake for about 15 minutes. Don't forget that they are smaller and will bake faster than your bread so check on them after 10 or so minutes.

Let them cool and enjoy as a healthy desert, they are perfect with some cream cheese or some jam.

You can see more images on my blog.

Yesterdays recap.

11 hours since I started my bake n blog day, I finally completed my bake. At first the dough was giving me some trouble, by being stubborn and not wanting to double fast enough, luckily my wife came up with a great solution, I took it into our baby room where we keep it warmer, and with in two hours it popped wright up.

I divided the dough into 1.5lb loaves and let it rise free formed on my granite counter. Last week I tried using tea towel but all my loaves got stuck to it and the bread fell flat as I was removing it from them. All together I had 16 loaves of bread and 20 paninis. As with my previous bake I still had trouble mastering the slashing, I will need to practice more with that.

One of the accomplishments is that I was able to place the bread in the wood fired oven in such a way that I baked all of them in just to bakes, so that is great, It means that I can bake more bread with out having to fire the oven again.

On the Pain au Levain I added extra steam to the oven about 7 minutes after placing the bread in, that resulted in a much crustier crust which I liked.

The spelt bread is the best variation that I have tried so far, it's definitely going to be one of the breads that I will bake regularly. One of the main thing I learned in this bake is to just relax during the whole process and don't try to rush things, sometimes the little beasts in the starter like to work on there own schedule and we just cant do much about it. It was lots of fun and I know that my family and many of my friends will enjoy the bread for the week to come.

Please visit my site to see more pictures from the bake.

Healthy living.

My last bake yielded 10 beautiful loves of bread, that turned out great with a soft crust and a nice mild flavor. This is the first bake that I did with spelt flour, but I got to tell you I absolutely loved the bread. As a meter of fact the next day I went out and bought myself 25lb of organic spelt flour. Back to the bread, this bread was baked in my WFO all 10 loaves at one time. Here is how I made this and I plan to make some other variation of this bread.It takes about 9 hours to bake this bread, meaning 20 minutes for the bake and the rest for kneading and resting the dough.

Ingredients for baking 10 small breads 1.5Lb each.

1kg (1000gram) rye starter 150% hydration.
3kg (3000gram) organic spelt flour.
1kg (1000gram) organic white flour.
2.5kg (2500gram) water, room temp.
75gram sea salt ground.

I start by doubling my starter a night before the bake from 500 gram to 1100 grams, since I will start mixing all the ingredients at about 5 am I figured that I need to mix my starter at about 9:00pm the night before, that way it will have 8 hours to double and become very active.

On the morning of the bake I take all the starter except 100 gram, which I will use to get my new starter for next bake, add it to with all my ingredients and hand mix it for about 3 minutes.

Rest the dough for 20 minutes this will allow the flour to fully absorb the water.

I believe that one of the secrets to having great bread is to make sure that the dough is well kneaded, so after 20 minute rest I knead the bread for about 15 minutes, (you also get a great work out in the morning if you do that).

Rest the dough again for 30 minutes, the dough should feel soft and elastic with a slight stick to it.

Final kneading, again mixing it for about 20 minutes.

First rice will take about 4-6 hours and that can vary, your dough should almost double in size before you will shape it in to breads.

When the dough almost doubled divide into individual breads, you can free form it, or use form. After forming let it rest for the second time, rising until it almost doubled in size, this will take about 2 hours. Cover the breads with a towel and you can spray a light mist of water to prevent it from drying.

Make sure your bread oven is nice and hot, test the floor of the oven by sprinkling some flour on it. After the bread has almost doubled place in the oven close the door and bake for about 20 minutes.

If you are baking this in you home oven you will need to preheat your oven to 455 F, bake for about 30-40 minutes.

This bread will be darker in color because of the spelt flour and the rye starter. You can also use light spelt and spelt starter, adjust the spelt starter to 100% hydration.

What do you think of this bread??

http://www.ourwholesomehomes.com

Hello,

I'm new to bread baking. So far i have only  tried making sandwich bread. Unfortunately I havent been very successful with it.

i would appreciate any help with ideas and recipes suggestions. I'm really new to this and dont know much bout baking breads.

thanx 

sally 

Hi there fresh loafers,

I just joined this community yesterday, while anxiously waitin for my first ever yeast bread to ferment and proof! Since hanukkah starts today at sundown, with sabbat, i was excited to try out a challah bread. I didn't get too ambitious with the braiding, and stuck to a 3 piece braid but i was more than thrilled with the results! Since i have an intolerance to modern wheat protein, i used 100% spelt flour (a mix of whole and light unbleached). I took the recipe from "Second Helpings Please!" and adapted slightly - i traded the sugar for honey and the wheat for spelt. This made a very wet, sticky dough so i had to add (what seemed like a lot) of extra flour to make a firmer dough, but with each rise it seemed to form a more workeable dough... now onto the pictures!

it turned out wonderfully- a nice honey sweetness, light flaky texture (which i have never managed to find with storebought spelt which tends to be really dense) and a wonderful nutty flavour from the spelt.

I am an avid kitchen enthusiast, and work at a cafe, dealing with almost 100% organic ingredients and as local as possible (depending on the time of year, obviously here in canada). I look forward to learning more about bread-making and realy getting my hands dirty trying new things!

best to all in this challah-day season!

en

has anyone ever used spelt flour to make a starter?  i read somewhere that whole wheat and organic flours are usually best.  i have some left over spelt and would like to use it before it expires.  i am starting my sourdough education next year, so just wanted to know if spelt flour is recommended or is a big NO, or "it don't really matter what flour you use"?

anyone?