I have already written about Bäcker Süpke's wholegrain spelt bread with whole grains in my 'other blog'.
But I think the TFL blog would be a much more appropriate place for this recipe.

I've made this bread several times by now, and it always turned out flawlessly. It's nothing I could claim any credit for, but , seeing how charming Meister Süpke is in his comments, I don't really think he'd mind the extra publicity. So I sat down and translated the original recipe, hoping to spread this around the blogosphere a little.

There are only two minor changes I made to the original recipe, apart from the translation, that is.

For one, I shied away from adding the soft, boiled grains to the dough at the very beginning and kneading them for half an hour. I feared they would completely disintegrate and so I decided to add them only for the last ten minutes. And it works very well, the grains remain whole and apparently it makes for something like a double hydration technique, with the dough being able to build up strength before I add the final bits of liquid with the grains.

Also, the original recipe calls for a bit of 'Brotgewürz', bread spices. Which is all very nice, but also entirely undefined as far as I know. So I guessed and used ground caraway and coriander seeds in equal proportions. Which turned out to be one of my luckier guesses lately. Both spices blend pitch perfectly with the taste of the spelt, warming and brightening the taste without being really distinguishable on their own.

This bread has become a constant fixture of our diet, and I can only stress that it is the least 'healthy' tasting whole-grain bread I've ever come across. It never stops to amaze me that it's really brown and not grey, that it's rather sticky than crumbly, open-crumbed and yet perfectly sliceable with a nice but demure crunch to the crust.

Roasted in the oven with just a few drops of honey until the corners start to turn dark, this bread makes a perfect treat on its own, or a great coaster underneath a grillt goat's cheese, or basically anything that needs a solid, earthy partner.

The only thing I am not really happy with is the name, unwieldy as it is. Even in German with its infatuation with endless strings of words it's a rare thing to need 47 letters to name a single bread. But for a bread with such a long list of strong points, I am more than willing to put up with a lot, even this behemoth of a name.

Bäcker Süpke's wholegrain spelt bread with whole grains
(translation and any mistakes are mine)
(makes two 850g loafs)

for the boiled grains
200g spelt grains
400ml water

for the sourdough
340g wholegrain spelt meal
10g ripe sourdough starter
340g warm water

for the soaker
200g wholegrain spelt flour
20g salt
120g water

for the final dough
190g wholegrain spelt flour
7g dry yeast (one sachet)
[EDIT: The original recipe uses 10g presumably fresh yeast, equaling half a sachet dry yeast.]
40g runny honey
1 heaped teaspoon ground caraway
1 heaped teaspoon ground coriander seeds (or more, to taste)

for decoration
rolled spelt, about 2 tablespoons

On the day before baking, bring the grains and the water to boil in a small pot. Cover and leave to simmer gently for about 10 minutes, then take off the flame, stir, and set aside, covered.

Mix all the ingredients for the sourdough until just incorporated. Cover and set aside.

Mix all the ingredients for the soaker until just incorporated. Cover and set aside. Leave all three bowls to ferment overnight in a cool room, but not the fridge, for a minimum of 16 hours.

On the day of baking, combine the sourdough, the soaker and the final ingredients in the bowl of your mixer and knead at lowest speed for twenty(sic) minutes.
I am not kidding. The original recipe says twenty minutes and the dough really needs every second of it. You'll see, in this case it makes all the difference between wet flour and a dough.

Leave to proof for an hour. Deflate the dough and add the boiled, cold grains.
The original recipe says to discard eventually remaining water, but I add it to keep the amount of added water identical each time. Never had much of it left with the grains, anyway.

Knead at low speed for another ten minutes.
That's half an hour kneading all together. Any wheat dough would be a neat rubber ball by now, but here, it just works perfectly.

Pour into a rectangular baking tin lined with non-stick paper. Even the dough and cover loosely with the rolled spelt. Leave to proof in a warm place for about an hour to one hour and a half.
The dough will increase about 20% in volume at most, and when ready will stop springing back if gently poked.

Preheat your oven to 220°C. Bake with steam for the first minutes and immediately reduce temperature to about 160°C. Bake for 100 minutes. Take out and leave to cool on a rack. Rest a day or at least until fully cooled before cutting.

Freezes perfectly well, and tastes especially well toasted.
We usually bake on stock and freeze the sliced  bread, thawing individual slices in the toaster. Talk about two sparrows and one stone.

Some more wise remarks of Bäcker Süpke:

• Always add all the salt to the soaker. Otherwise, the enzymes of the wholegrain flour will produce harmful byproducts leading to a grumbling stomach.
• Wholegrain doughs, especially wholegrain spelt doughs, have to be wet - rather add a little more water.
• Bake long and 'slow' to get all that moisture out of the bread.
• Always use very little yeast and long final proofs, else you wouldn't get a sliceable bread.
• Playing with the honey and the spices is a great way of tweaking this recipe!

Hello again

This is a bread which I had made once before(with minimal success) a long time ago when I was still a relative sourdough beginner, and I thought I would try it again to see if my new techniques learned here, and the countless hours pouring over my bread book library would produce better results. The formula is courtesy of breadtopia.com a site I visit from time to time to watch their great videos. I followed the formula exactly except as noted in italics below. I also changed the mixing, and fermenting schedule to better fit my personal schedule.

Biga

• 200 grams water
• 120 grams ripe sourdough starter (100% Hydration)
• 236 grams white whole wheat flour (the original recipe only called for whole wheat flour)

Final Dough

• 274 grams warm water(I felt the dough was too dry and added approx. 2-3 additional Tbsp)
• 85 grams whole rye flour
• 250 grams AP flour(the original recipe called for bread flour)
• 170 grams whole spelt flour
• all of biga
• 13 grams salt

Method

1.) The night before the mix make up the biga and allow to ferment at room temp. for 5 hours or until visible activity is observed. Then refrigerate for up to 24 hours or until ready to use.

2.) The next day take the biga out of the fridge and cut into small pieces, then place all ingredients except the salt into the bowl of a mixer and mix for 2 minutes to fully integrate all of the ingredients.

3.) Autolyse for 20-30 minutes.

4.) Sprinkle the salt on top of the dough, and mix for 3-4 minutes on medium speed until moderate gluten develpment.

5.) Ferment 3 hours with folds spaced evenly throughout.

6.) Portion dough into desired size and lightly round, allow to bench rest 20-30 minutes.

7.) Shape as desired and immedietly place into fridge overnight.

8.) Preheat oven with stone and steaming vessel to 450degF.

9.) Take dough straight from refrigerator, slash and load into oven. Steam as desired. Bake until bread shows rich color, and internal temperature is at least 205degF.

Anyways I think my results were much better then my first attempt(sorry no photos), and if you want to see the recipe in it's unedited format you can see it at breadtopia.com

Kevin

Hi all,

As a result of my 9 yr old's interest in ancient Egypt, we're trying to re-create the bread they baked. After one disaster involving whole spelt (the disaster was my mess-up, not the spelt's!), we did a little more research and found that, in addition to my overproofing, we had the wrong grain. What we should be using is emmer wheat, not spelt.

I think the formula/recipe was fine on this, but the dough was either a bit overproofed or underkneaded. How's that for confusing? :D

I was visiting with my sister in Wisconsin, and we joined several other family members for a July 4th get-together at my cousins' cottage. I decided to bring bread for my contribution and thought it would be best if baked fresh. So the night before I started 2 loaves each of white and whole wheat NYT No-Knead bread. In the morning, I folded each loaf and placed in an oiled ziploc bag. The bags were carefully placed in a soft sided picnic-cooler-on-wheels.

Just came across this suggestion for checking on whether your coarse wholegrain dough is properly kneaded, in cases when the traditional windowpane test won't work.

"Use your thumb and forefinger to pull up a piece of the dough about an inch above the dough surface. If the dough holds the pinch and stands in a little ridge without springing back, it is fully kneaded."

I don't believe I've heard this one before. Anybody else using this technique?

This bread fever is contagious! After seeing me baking bread for two weeks, my husband decided he too was going to make bread. Because he loves baguettes so much, he decided he was going to try lesson 2 from floydm's tutorial... So, while I was making my Honey Wheat Bread, he was making his own bread... Here's the result...

I was just given a copy of Daniel Leader's (and Lauren Chattman's) new book "Local Breads: Sourdough and Whole-Grain Recipes from Europe's Best Artisan Bakers

My husband loves sourdough bread.  I can't argue with the quality of the bread, but it's usually too sour for my taste.  So, while it may sound crazy, I'd like to be able to make a less-sour sourdough.  Are there things I can do to accomplish this? 

I'd like to make my own starter from wild yeasts, and would prefer to bake mostly whole grain breads. I have absolutely no sourdough baking experience - and little enough with any bread. 

If I do manage to make a less sour bread, will it still have the lower glycemic impact of sourdough?