Help with custom times for an all-spelt bread made in a Zojirushi Virtuoso
I have been making bread with bread machines now for a couple of years. I'm 70 and my hands aren't up to kneading...I've been very happy with a couple of recipes I've worked out, one whole wheat with a ton of raisins, cranberries and nuts, the other, a very tasty bread flour/barley flour. But my partner has wicked IBS and gas/bloating, and her doc has indicated this is probably a fructon not gluten allergy (who knew from fructons, they must be from the planet Fructose) and wants her to have a 100% spelt bread. By numerous accounts, really delicious bread can be made with it, unlike the processed cardboard you find as commercial G-F bread. There are lots of interesting recipes on the web....I'm looking at this one: https://www.frugalfarmwife.com/article/perfect-spelt-bread/ [1] There's no shortage of interesting recipes for 100% spelt that's dairy free. Soft crust would be nice too, since one set of choppers takes a bath with Polident every night... But, but....while there are recipes, nobody really gets precise about the bread machine cycle. It's sort of Hail Mary and use a quick bread cycle and hope for the best. At the same time everybody says that spelt is temperamental...you shouldn't knead too much or too little, you shouldn't proof too long or short...and one post seems to be imply a really long rise time, or so I'd think at it quoting an ideal total bread machine time of 4.5 hours. I is not a bread artiste....all I know is that by slow blind adjustment, I got my two ace recipes working....and so I have only a glimmering of what wheat dough (how wet) should be like. And that's with bread flour which is relatively easy to work with and get something you can eat and even looks good. Everything I do is, blush, the baking equivalent of painting by the numbers. The deeper mysteries of cranky alternative grains is really beyond me The Virtuoso has both a gluten-free cycle and a custom one where you can set the length of every part of the cycle. So I throw myself upon the mercy of the real bread makers who know in their bones when dough has been knead (just) enough, when it has risen enough, when it has be knocked down enough...even with alternate grains and ask: What cycle times should I set? Please refer to the attached graphic and suggest times for each step. The Rest at the beginning is to get everything at the same temp, and I have always locked it out. The complete manual (which also shows the Gluten-Free cycle) can be found at: https://www.zojirushi.com/servicesupport/manuals/manual_pdf/bb_pac20.pdf [2]