100% WW Spelt Yeasted Soft Fluffy Sandwich Loaf, Mixer Method, Laurel's Loaf For Learning, With Yogurt
Hi everyone, I'm happy to be back after a year of having a young person with celiac sharing my home. They have moved on and I can mill and bake again without worrying.
To celebrate, I brought out my barely-used Nutrimill Artiste mixer and started really digging in to try and learn exactly how a fully kneaded, fully developed 100% WW dough looks and feels. And since spelt is my favorite-est most delicious wheat, I've extended the project to 100% spelt.
All the flours are freshly-milled on the finest setting of my MockMill 100. So they're a bit chunky. For these bakes I am not sifting and re-milling or soaking the bran.
And, you guys! Check it out! Spelt is not nearly as difficult to work with as I thought. It's just more extensible. So the funny thing is, autolysing the dough is done to increase extensibility and flavor. Weel, when you're using spelt you get the extensibility AND absolutely delicious flavor, without needing to autolyse.
For this bake I did rest the flour without kneading for an hour after the initial mix. Because the yeast was in the dough, it basically did a first bulk rise during that time. It behaved the same as when I only rested it for 15 minutes, so I didn't find an advantage in the longer rest. It didn't do any harm though.
I have been using the Laurels Kitchen Bread Book "Loaf for Learning" formula for these bakes. It is a relatively lean dough, with the additon of 2 TBSP oil and 1/3 cup of plain yogurt in each 450g-flour loaf.
I haven't been able to find many photos of 100% whole wheat dough at different stages of development, so next time I'll try to take more pictures.
Comments
Beautiful crumb on that 100% spelt sandwich loaf Jess, you must be so pleased, I would be.
Happy New Year all the best in happiness and health
Benny
Thanks Benny, it came out very nice, soft but with a delicate chew, and wonderful flavor from the spelt. I'm finally getting the hang of kneading!
Nice results from using 100% whole grain, and the flavor of freshly milled flour.
The texture came out very nice and the spelt gives it a great flavor. I was previously scared off from using 100% spelt but it's truly not that different from working with regular whole wheat. And it tastes much better to me!
Seasidejess, The more I look at your loaf the more I love it. I so want to try this with my 2 yogurts. I suspect the lighter of my two yogurts may work beautifully in this. BIG QUESTION. - CUP SIZEYou give weights in grams for most ingredients but what is the size of your cup measurement? A 'CUP' is such a wild measurement as each country has a different one. Only made more random with so many home cooks having older measuring cups to throw in even more variation into the mix.
A US cup is about 237 ml, making 1/3 cup about 80 ml.
The yogurt I use weighs about the same as water, so I sometimes use the scale and measure it as 80 grams instead of by volume as 1/3 cup.
Since this is a double recipe, it would be about 116 ml (or grams) yogurt and about 480 ml (or grams) water.
After the initial mix it is important to feel the dough. It should be quite soft and sticky, more on the mushy side, but not runny. Add more flour or water as needed.
When you're choosing yogurt, avoid strained styles such as Greek yogurt or skyr. You want to use a yogurt with roughly the same 20% solids as milk. Otherwise your dough will be under hydrated.
Let me know how your bread comes out!
FYI I often rest the dough after mixing for as little as 20 minutes before moving on to kneading. An hour isn't necessary. A shorter rest will result in a longer first bulk ferment time.
That is a fantastic looking loaf!
I was happy with this bake!