Spelt & Corn Bread. A dry affair, to say the least.
The idea seemed a good one, in my mind at least. The nuttiness of spelt, combined with the sweetness of corn. Never tried anything like it before, so it was a complete shot in the dark. I missed spectacularly, and yet, I have hit the mark at the same time. Weird ey?
Since I have never baked a corn bread before, I used a recipe from FloyM [1], and altered it to my liking/ingredients available. Here's what I did.
300 grams corn flour
700 grams whole wheat spelt flour
18 gr salt
40 gr sugar
15 gr instant yeast
4 deciliter water
2 deciliters (butter)milk
40 gr sunflower oil
1) I combined 2 dl of water with the corn flour, and let it sit for an hour.
2) Then I combined the rest of the dry ingredients, combined them with the corn mixture, and added the rest of the liquids.
3) I gently combined the ingredients (4 mins) and kneeded for about 6 to 8 minutes.
4) Rest and rise until doubled in size.
5) Knock back gently, shape 2 loafs. Rize in loaf tin until almost doubled in size.
Backed in an oven. Starting temp van 230C, after adding breads and a cup of water on the bottom, turned down the temp to 210C. Baking for about 45 - 50 mins, until core reached 95c.
Result aesthetics:
Not bad looking, but not really enviting either. 'Meh' was the first word that came to mind.
Verdict:
So the result was palatable. It was inteded as a bread for day to day use. Nothing special. And it wasn't. The flavor was alright. The feel in the mouth was very bad. Much to flaky/grainy. The crum itself wasn't dry - absense of fluids - but it felt really dry. However. However.
By accident I used the bread to make some grilledcheese toast for in a french union soup I made. The bread turned out to be excellent for tosties/grillend sandwiches. The corn gives it an awemsome crunch, and the addition of melting butter & cheese makes all the dryness in the mouth disappear.
Improvements:
Possibly, using just milk rather than a combination of water and (butter)milk improves palatabillety
Possibly, adding butter rather then oil improves palatabillety.
Possibly, soaking the corn in more liquid.