100% Einkorn Bread

A few months ago, I was given a one-pound package of einkorn grain.  While I've been interested in einkorn and other primitive wheats, the high cost (relative to modern wheats) has put me off.  I don't have any compelling health issues that would militate against using modern wheats, so my curiosity hasn't been enough to override the high price point.

Since I was at the point of needing to make bread again, and since the einkorn was sitting on the shelf, I decided it was high time to mill the grain and use it in a bread.  I spent quite a bit of time noodling through the archives here on TFL, looking at einkorn posts.  The bulk of those were levain-based breads.  Since I wanted to get a sense of the einkorn's flavor without other influences, and since there was so much commentary about einkorn's weak gluten, I went in search of a yeasted version.  What I eventually settled on was a recipe from Jovial Foods for an Easy Einkorn Whole Grain Bread.

The recipe produces a fairly straightforward no-knead bread.  The one tweak that I made was to bump the salt content up from 3g to 8g.  After combining the water, honey, and yeast, I milled the flour straight into the bowl, added the salt, and stirred everything until all of the flour was absorbed and a rough dough formed.  The dough was left in the bowl, covered, and allowed to ferment for 30 minutes. 

At the end of the short bulk ferment, the dough looked puffy and was perhaps 50% larger.  At that point, the dough was scraped from the bowl into a well-greased 8x4 loaf pan.  I smoothed the top of the loaf off with wet fingers.  The loaf was covered and allowed to ferment for another 30 minutes.  The oven was preheated while the loaf fermented.

At the end of the final ferment, I ran into a snag.  The loaf had expanded nicely and was domed about half an inch above the rim of the pan.  The dough lived up to einkorn's reputation for stickiness and did not want to release the plastic wrap that had been draped over the pan.  I used a bowl scraper to gently coax the dough loose from the plastic but still wound up with a scalped loaf.  Once again, I wet my fingers and smoothed it out as much as I could without causing further injury.

Fortunately, baking went off without a hitch.  At the end of 40 minutes, the internal temperature was between 195F and 200F, and the bread was a lovely shade of brown.  The dough was allowed to cool in the pan for 15 minutes and then turned out to cool on a rack. Once cooled, the loaf was placed in a plastic bread bag.

I used the bread the next day to make a ham sandwich for lunch.  The bread is delicious, without any hint of the bitterness that some people have noted in einkorn.  Does it taste significantly better than whole wheat bread made with modern wheats?  Not that I can perceive.  And certainly not enough to justify paying multiples of the price for modern wheat if flavor is the primary selection criteria. 

If you look closely at the crumb, you'll notice that the bread was just slipping across the border between well-fermented and over-fermented.  The crumb in the upper part of a slice is rather coarse and open while the crumb at the bottom is showing signs of compression.  Overall, if I were to use this recipe again, I'd reduce the yeast content from 7g to 4-5g.  I'd also dial the hydration back to about 70%, since the bread is extremely moist at the recipe's 77%.

Here are a couple of pics that show the loaf:

Barring the tussle with the plastic wrap, it would have been quite pretty.

Paul