Another 100% Spelt Sourdough Trial (Almost 100% Hydration)

Hey guys, 

just made this awesome spelt sourdough bread that actually looks more like a loaf than most of the others I've tried. Most of the time I do a dough with 60% hydration, but I read that whole grains don't really open up as much as white flour does unless you hydrate the hell out of it. I am not against people who use white flour I just don't use it myself for dietary reasons. I am really not into whole wheat actually and prefer only to use ancient grains as it contains more fiber, protein, and other viable nutrition.  That's not to say I wouldn't eat wheat if I were offered a burger on a bun at a friends backyard bbq, I just personally think it's not the greatest thing to put in your body aside from many other horrible delicious things. But I digress. At any rate this loaf was baked at almost 100% hydration. As you can see the bread looks kind of laughable before cutting into it. The dough was so wet it was almost unmanageable. I basically did a few stretch and folds despite not really getting a good handle on the dough. The dough was basically a couple tablespoons of water away from being pancake batter. I baked it at 400F in a steel pot with a lid that I preheated ahead of time. Basically baked it with the lid on for 30 min and then another 30 min with the lid off. As much as you guys might want to laugh at the shape of this dough I'm pretty happy considering all the disasters I had up to now before this one. I want to try another dough at 70% or 80% because I feel I might be able to manage it better and possibly get a little more open crumb texture since I'd be able to actually get a handle on the dough vs preventing it from spilling over the kitchen counter. I'm only using a spelt starter that has only been fed spelt flour (although I did feed it einkorn flour 2 or 3 times, but it still performs great). I am also using organic whole spelt flour only in the dough as well. I will continue making sourdough loaves until I feel comfortable doing so. I'm not sure why it's such a steep learning curve as I've already made hundreds of breads with bakers yeast in the past. Maybe it's because I chose one of the hardest grains to use aka "spelt". It doesn't exactly perform like white flour or wheat for that matter. But if I had to choose one it probably most closely resembles something of a whole wheat flour texture, however spelt just has it's own flavor and texture profile. Anyway, until next time hope this helps some newbies out there experimenting with whole grain sourdoughs.